 22 For a brief space after the breaking of the scousweep Kent did not move. He felt Mahat's arms closing tighter and tighter around his neck. He caught a flash of her upturned face, the flush of a few moments before, replaced by a deathly pallor, and he knew that without explanation on his part she understood the almost hopeless situation they were in. He was glad of that. It gave him a sense of relief to know that she would not go into a panic no matter what happened. He bowed his face to hers so that he felt the velvety smoothness of her cheek. She turned her mouth to him and they kissed. His embrace was crushing for a moment, fierce with his love for her, desperate with his determination to keep her from harm. His brain was working swiftly. There was possibly one chance in ten that the scow, rudderless and without human guidance, would sweep safely between the black walls and jagged teeth of the chute. Even if the scow made this passage they would be in the power of the police, unless some splendid whimsicality of fate sent at a shore before the launch came through. On the other hand, if it was carried far enough through the lower rapids they might swim. And there was the rifle laying across the pack. That, after all, was his greatest hope, if the scow made the passage of the chute. The bulwarks of the scow would give them greater protection than the thinner walls of the launch would give to their pursuers. In his heart there raged suddenly a hatred for that law of which he had been a part. It was running them to destruction and he would fight. There would not be more than three men in the launch and he would kill them if killing became a necessity. There were speeding like an unbridled race-horse through the boiling rapids now. The clumsy craft under their feet twisted and turned. The dripping tops of great rocks shot past a little out of their channel. And Mahet, with one arm still about his neck, was facing the peril ahead with him. They could see the dragon's tooth, black and grim, wading squarely in their path. In another hundred and twenty seconds they would be upon it or past it. There was no time for Kent to explain. He sprang to his pack, whipped a knife from his pocket, and cut the stout Babish rope that reinforced its straps. In another instant he was back at Mahet's side, fastening the Babish about her waist. The other end he gave to her and she tidied about his wrist. She smiled as she finished the knot. It was a strange, tense little smile, but it told him that she was not afraid, that she had great faith in him and knew what the Babish meant. I can swim, James! she cried, if we strike the rock. She did not finish because of the sudden cry that came to his lips. He had almost forgotten the most vital of all things. There was not time to unlace his boots. With his knife he cut the laces in a single downward thrust. Swiftly he freed his own feet and Mahet's. Even in this hour of their peril it thrilled him to see how quickly Mahet responded to the thoughts that moved him. She tore at her outer garments and slipped them off as he wriggled out of his heavy shirt. A slim, white underskirted little thing, her glorious hair flying in the wind that came through the chute, her throat and arms bare, her eyes shining at Kent, she came again close within his arms and her lips framed softly his name. And a moment later she turned her face up and cried quickly, Kiss me, James! Kiss me! Her warm lips clung to his and her bare arms encircled his neck with the choking grip of a child. He looked ahead and braced himself on his feet, and after that he buried one of his hands in the soft mass of her hair and pressed her face against his naked breast. Ten seconds later the crash came. Squirrelly amid ships the scow struck the dragon's tooth. Kent was prepared for the shock, but his attempt to hold his feet with Mahet in his arms was futile. The bulwark saved them from crashing against the slippery face of the rock itself. Amid the roar of water that filled his ears he was conscious of the rending of timbers. The scow bulged up with the mighty force beneath, and for a second or two it seemed as though that force was going to overturn and submerge it. Then slowly it began to slip off the nose of the rock. Holding to the rail with one hand and clinging to Mahet with his other arm, Kent was gripped in the horror of what was happening. The scow was slipping into the right-hand channel. In that channel there was no hope, only death. Mahet was squirrelly facing the thing ahead. In this hour when each second held a lifetime of suspense Kent saw that she understood. Yet she did not cry out. Her face was dead white. Her hair and arms and shoulders were dripping with the splash of water. But she was not terrified as he had seen terror. When she turned her eyes to him he was amazed by the quiet, calm look that was in them. Her lips trembled. His soul expressed itself in a wordless cry that was drowned in another crash of timber as a jutting snag of the tooth crumpled up the little cabin as if it had been paste-bored. He felt overwhelming him the surge of a thing mightier than the menace of the chute. He could not lose. It was inconceivable, impossible, with her to fight for this slim, wonderful creature who smiled at him even as she saw death. And then, as his arm closed still more tightly about her, the monsters of power and death gave him their answer. The scow swung free of the dragon's tooth, half filled with water. Its cracked and broken carcass was caught in the rock jaws of the eastern channel. It ceased to be a floating thing. It was inundation, disillusion, utter obliteration almost without shock. And Kent found himself in the thundering rush of waters holding to Mahat. For a space they were under. Black water and white froth fumed and exploded over them. It seemed an age before fresh air filled Kent's nostrils. He thrust Mahat upward and cried out to her. He heard her answer. I'm all right, Jeans! His swimming prowess was of little avail now. He was like a chip. All his effort was to make of himself a barrier between Mahat's soft body and the rocks. It was not the water itself that he feared, but the rocks. There were scores and hundreds of them, like the teeth of a mighty grinding machine. And the jaw was a quarter of a mile in length. He felt the first shock, the second, the third. He was not thinking of time or distance, but was fighting solely to keep himself between Mahat and death. The first time he failed, a blind sort of rage burned in his brain. He saw her white body strained over a slippery deluge-worn rock. Her head was flung back, and he saw the long masses of her hair streaming out in the white froth, and he thought for an instant that her fragile body had been broken. He fought still more fiercely after that, and she knew for what he was fighting. Only in an unreal sort of way was he conscious of shock and hurt. It gave him no physical pain, yet he sensed the growing dizziness in his head and increasing lack of strength in his arms and body. They were half-way through the chute when he shot against a rock with terrific force. The contact tore Marat from him. He plunged for her, missed his grip, and then saw her opposite him, clinging to the same rock. The Babish rope had saved her. Fastened about her waist and tied to his wrist, it still held them together, with the five feet of rock between them. Panting, their life half beaten out of them, their eyes met over that rock. Now that he was out of the water, the blood began streaming from Kent's arms and shoulders and face, but he smiled at her as a few moments before she had smiled at him. Her eyes were filled with the pain of his hurts. He nodded back in the direction from which they had come. We're out of the worst of it, he tried to shout. As soon as we've got our wind I will climb over the rock to you. It won't take us longer than a couple of minutes, perhaps less, to make the quiet water at the end of the channel. She heard him and nodded her reply. He wanted to give her confidence, and he had no intention of resting for her position filled him with a terror which he fought to hide. The Babish rope, not half as large a round as his little finger, had swung her to the downstream side of the rock. It was the slender thread of Buckskin and his own weight that were holding her. If the Buckskin should break, he thanked God that it was the tough Babish that had been around his pack. An inch at a time he began to draw himself up on the rock. The undertow behind the rock had flung a massive mullet's long hair toward him so that it was a foot or two nearer to him than her clinging hands. He worked himself toward that, for he saw that he could reach it more quickly than he could reach her. At the same time he had to keep his end of the Babish taut. It was from the beginning an almost superhuman task. The rock was slippery as oil. Twice his eyes shot downstream with the thought that it might be better to cast himself bodily into the water, and after that draw Marat to him by means of the Babish. What he saw convinced him that such action would be fatal. He must have Marat in his arms. If he lost her even for a few seconds the life would be beaten from her body in that rock-strewed maelstrom below. And then suddenly the Babish court about his wrist grew loose. The reaction almost threw him back. With the loosening of it a cry came from Marat. It all happened in an instant, in almost less time than his brain could seize upon the significance of it, the slipping of her hands from the rock, the shooting of her white body away from him in the still whiter spume of the rapids. The rock had cut the Babish, and she was gone. With a cry that was like the cry of a madman he plunged after her. The water engulfed him. He twisted himself up, freeing himself from the undertow. Twenty feet ahead of him, thirty, he caught a glimpse of a white arm and then of Marat's face before she disappeared in a wall of froth. Into that froth he shot after her. He came out of it blinded, groping wildly for her, crying out her name. His fingers cut the end of the Babish that was fastened about his own wrist, and he clutched it savagely, believing for a moment that he had found her. Thicker and more deadly the rocks of the lower passage rose in his way. They seemed like living things, like devils filled with the desire to torture and destroy. They struck and beat at him. Their laughter was the roar of a Niagara. He no longer cried out. His brain grew heavy, and clubs were beating him, beating and breaking him into a formless thing. The rock drifts of spume, lather white like the frosting of a monster cake, turned gray and then black. He did not know when he ceased fighting. The day went out. Night came. The world was oblivion. And for a space he ceased to live. CHAPTER XXIII An hour later the fighting forces in his body dragged Kent back into existence. He opened his eyes. The shock of what had happened did not at once fall upon him. His first sensation was of awakening from a sleep that had been filled with pain and horror. Then he saw a black rock wall opposite him. He heard the sullen roar of the stream. His eyes fell upon a vivid patch of light reflected from the setting sun. He dragged himself up until he was on his knees, and all at once a thing that was like an iron hoop choking his senses seemed to break in his head, and he staggered to his feet, crying out Mahet's name. Understanding inundated him with its horror, deadening his tongue after that first cry, filling his throat with a moaning, rubbing agony. Mahet was gone. She was lost. She was dead. Swiftly, as reason came, his eyes took in his environment. For a quarter of a mile above him he could see the white spume between the chasm walls darkening with the approach of night. He could hear more clearly the roar of the death floods. But close to him was smooth water, and he stood now on a shelving tongue of rock and shale upon which the current had flung him. In front of him was a rock wall. Behind him was another. There was no footing except where he stood, and Mahet was not with him. Only the truth could batter at his brain as he stood there. But his physical self refused to accept that truth. If he had lived, she must live. She was there, somewhere, along the shore, among the rocks. The moaning in his throat gave way to the voicing of her name. He shouted and listened. He swayed back along the tongue of rock to the bolder strewn edge of the chasm wall. A hundred yards farther on was the opening of the chute. He came out of this, his clothes torn from him, his body bleeding, unrecognizable, half a madman, shouting her name more and more loudly. The glow of the setting sun struck him at last. He was out from between the chasm walls, and it lighted up the green world for him. Ahead of him the river widened and swept on and tranquil quiet. And now it was no longer fear that possessed him. It was the horrible, overwhelming certainty of the thing. The years fell from him, and he sobbed, sobbed like a boy stricken by some great childish grief as he searched along the edge of the shore. Over and over again he cried and whispered by its name. But he did not shout it again, for he knew that she was dead. She was gone from him for ever. Yet he did not cease to search. The last of the sun went out. Twilight came, and then darkness. Even in that darkness he continued to search for a mile below the chute, calling her name more loudly now, and listening always for the answer which he knew would never come. The moon came out after a time, and hour after hour he kept up his hopeless quest. He did not know how badly the rocks had battered and hurt him, and he scarcely knew when it was that exhaustion dropped him like a dead man in his tracks. When dawn came it found him wandering away from the river, and toward noon of that day he was found by André Boilleux, the old white-haired half-breed who trapped on Burntwood Creek. André was shocked at the sight of his wounds, and half dragged and half carried him to his shack hidden away in the forest. For six days thereafter Kent remained at old André's place simply because he had neither the strength nor the reason to move. André wondered that there were no broken bones in him, but his head was terribly hurt, and it was that hurt that for three days and three nights made Kent hover with nerve-wracking indecision between life and death. The fourth day reason came back to him, and Boilleux fed him venison broth. The fifth day he stood up. The sixth he thanked André and said that he was ready to go. André outfitted him with old clothes, gave him a supply of food and God's blessing. And Kent returned to the chute, giving André to understand that his destination was Athabasca landing. Kent knew that it was not wise for him to return to the river. He knew that it would have been better for him both in mind and body had he gone in the opposite direction. But he no longer had in him the desire to fight even for himself. He followed the lines of least resistance, and these led him back to the scene of the tragedy. His grief, when he returned, was no longer the heartbreaking agony of that first night. It was a deep-seated, consuming fire that had already burned him out, heart and soul. Even caution was dead in him. He feared nothing, avoided nothing. Had the police boat been at the chute, he would have revealed himself without any thought of self-preservation. A ray of hope would have been precious medicine to him, but there was no hope. Mahat was dead. Her tender body was destroyed. And he was alone, unfathomably and hopelessly alone. And now, after he had reached the river again, something held him there. From the head of the chute to a bend in the river two miles below, his feet wore a beaten trail. Three or four times a day he would make the trip, and along the path he set a few snares in which he caught rabbits for food. Each night he made his bed in a crevice among the rocks at the foot of the chute. At the end of a week the old Jim Kent was dead. Even O'Connor would not have recognized him with a shaggy growth of beard, his hollow eyes, and the sunken cheeks which the beard failed to hide. And the fighting spirit in him also was dead. Once or twice there leaped up in him a sudden passion demanding vengeance upon the accursed law that was accountable for the death of Mahat. But even this flame snuffed itself out quickly. And then on the eighth day he saw the edge of a thing that was almost hidden under an overhanging bank. He fished it out. It was Mahat's little pack, and for many minutes before he opened it Kent crushed the sodden treasure to his breast, staring with half-mad eyes down where he had found it, as if Mahat must be there too. Then he ran with it to an open space where the sun fell warmly on a great flat rock that was level with the ground, and with sobbing breath he opened it. It was filled with the things he had picked up quickly in a room the night of their flight from Kedzdy's bungalow, and as he drew them out one by one and placed them in the sun on the rock a new and sudden rush of life swept through his veins, and he sprang to his feet and faced the river again as if at last a hope had come to him. Then he looked down again upon what she had treasured, and reaching out his arms to them he whispered, Mahat, my little goddess! Even in his grief the overwhelming mastery of his love for the one who was dead brought a smile to his haggard and bearded face. For Mahat, in filling her little pack on that night of hurried flight, had chosen strange things. On the sunlit rock where he had placed them were a pair of the little pumps which he had fallen on his knees to worship in her room, and with these she had crowded into the pack one of the billowing, sweet-smelling dresses which had made his heart stand still for a moment when he first looked into their hiding place. It was no longer soft and cobwebby as it had been then, like down fluttering against his cheeks, but sodden and discolored as it lay on the rock with little rivulets of water running from it. With the shoes and the dress were the intimate necessities which Mahat had taken with her. But it was one of the pumps that Kent picked up and crushed close to his ragged breast, one of the two she had worn that first wonderful day she had come to see him at Cardigan's place. This hour was the beginning of another change in Kent. It seemed to him that a message had come to him from Mahat herself, that the spirit of her had returned to him and was with him now, stirring strange things in his soul and warming his blood with a new heat. She was gone for ever, and yet she had come back to him, and the truth grew upon him that this spirit of her would never leave him again as long as he lived. He felt her nearness. Unconsciously he reached out his arms, and a strange happiness entered into him to battle with grief and loneliness. His eyes shone with a new glow as they looked at her little belongings on that sunlit rock. It was as if they were flesh and blood of her, a part of her heart and soul. They were the voice of her faith in him, her promise that she would be with him always. For the first time in many days Kent felt a new force within him, and he knew that she was not quite gone that he had something of her left to fight for. That night he made his bed for a last time in the crevice between the rocks, and his treasure was gathered within the protecting circle of his arms as he slept. The next day he struck out north and east. On the fifth day after he left the country of André Boillieu he traded his watch to a half-breed for a cheap gun, ammunition, a blanket, flour, and a cooking outfit. After that he had no hesitation in burying himself still deeper into the forest. A month later no one would have recognized Kent as the one-time crack-man of end-division. Bearded, ragged, long-haired, he wandered with no other purpose than to be alone and to get still farther away from the river. Occasionally he talked with an Indian or a half-breed. Each night, though the weather was very warm, he made himself a small camp-fire, for it was always in these hours with the fire-light about him that he felt mahet was very near. It was then that he took out one by one the precious things that were in mahet's little pack. He worshipped these things. The dress and each of the little shoes he had wrapped in the velvety inner bark of the birch-tree. He protected them from wet and storm. Had emergency called for it he would have fought for them. They became, after a time, more precious than his own life, and in a vague sort of way at first he began to thank God that the river had not robbed him of everything. Kent's inclination was not to fight himself into forgetfulness. He wanted to remember every act, every word, every treasured caress that chained him for all time to the love he had lost. Mahet became more a part of him every day. Dead in the flesh she was always at his side, nestling close in the shelter of his arms at night, walking with her hand in his during the day. And in this belief his grief was softened by the sweet and merciful comfort of a possession of which neither man nor fate could rob him, a beloved presence always with him. It was this presence that rebuilt Kent. It urged him to throw up his head again, to square his shoulders, to look life once more straight in the face. It was both inspiration and courage to him, and grew nearer and dearer to him as time passed. Early autumn found him in the Fond du Lac country, two hundred miles east of Fort Chippewaïen. That winter he joined a Frenchman, and until February they trapped along the edges of the lower fingers of the barons. He came to think a great deal of Picard, his comrade, but he revealed nothing of his secret to him or of the new desire that was growing in him. And as the winter lengthened this desire became a deep and abiding yearning. It was with him night and day. He dreamed of it when he slept, and it was never out of his thoughts when awake. He wanted to go home. And when he thought of home it was not of the landing and not of the country south. For him home meant only one place in the world now, the place where Maet had lived. Somewhere hidden in the mountains far north and west was that mysterious valley of silent men where they had been going when her body died. And the spirit of her wanted him to go to it now. It was like a voice pleading with him, urging him to go, to live there always where she had lived. He began to plan, and in this planning he found new joy and new life. He would find her home, her people, the valley that was to have been their paradise. So late in February with his share of the winter catch in his pack he said good-bye to Picard and faced the river again. 24. Kent had not forgotten that he was an outlaw, but he was not afraid. Now that he had something new and thrilling to fight for, he fell back again upon what he called the finesse of the game. He approached Chippewaian cautiously, although he was sure that even his old friends at the landing would fail to recognize him now. His beard was four or five inches long and his hair was shaggy and uncut. Picard had made him a coat that winter of young caribou skin and it was fringed like an Indian's. Kent chose his time and entered Chippewaian just before dusk. Oil lamps were burning in the Hudson's Bay Company's store when he went in with his furs. The place was empty, except for the factors clerk, and for an hour he bartered. He bought a new outfit, a Winchester rifle, and all the supplies he could carry. He did not forget a razor and a pair of shears, and when he was done he still had the value of two silver fox skins and cash. He left Chippewaian that same night and by the light of a winter moon made his camp half a dozen miles northward toward Smith Landing. He was on the slave river now and for weeks traveled slowly but steadily northward on snowshoes. He avoided Fort Smith and Smith Landing and struck westward before he came to Fort Resolution. It was in April that he struck Hay River Post where the Hay River empties into Great Slay of Lake. Until the ice broke up Kent worked at Hay River. When it was safe he started down the Mackenzie in a canoe. It was late in June when he turned up the Leard to the South Nahani. You go straight through between the sources of the North and the South Nahani, Marat had told him. It is there you find the Sulphur Country and beyond the Sulphur Country is the Valley of Silent Men. At last he came to the edge of this country. He camped with the stink of it in his nostrils. The moon rose and he saw that desolate world as through the fumes of a yellow smoke. With dawn he went on. He passed through broad, low morasses out of which rose sulfurous fogs. Mile after mile he buried himself deeper in it and it became more and more a dead country, a lost hell. There were berry bushes on which there grew no berries. There were forests and swamps but without a living creature to inhabit them. It was a country of water in which there were no fish, of air in which there were no birds, of plants without flowers, a reeking, stinking country still with the stillness of death. He began to turn yellow. His clothing, his canoe, his hands, face, everything turned yellow. He could not get the filthy taste of sulfur out of his mouth. Yet he kept on, straight west, by the compass Gowen had given him at Hey River. Even this compass became yellow in his pocket. It was impossible for him to eat. Only twice that day did he drink from his flask of water. And Marat had made this journey. He kept telling himself that. It was the secret way in and out of their hidden world, a region accursed by devils, a forbidden country to both Indian and white man. It was hard for him to believe that she had come this way, that she had drunk in the air that was filling his own lungs, nauseating him a dozen times to the point of sickness. He worked desperately. He felt neither fatigue nor the heat of the warm water about him. Night came, and the moon rose, lighting up with a sickly glow the diseased world that had swallowed him. He lay in the bottom of his canoe, covering his face with his caribou coat, and tried to sleep. But sleep would not come. Before dawn he struck on, watching his compass by the light of matches. All that day he made no effort to swallow food. But with the coming of the second night he found the air easier to breathe. He fought his way on by the light of the moon, which was clearer now. And at last, in a resting spell, he heard far ahead of him the howl of a wolf. In his joy he cried out. A Western breeze brought him air that he drank in as a desert-stricken man drinks water. He did not look at his compass again, but worked steadily in the face of that fresh air. An hour later he found that he was paddling again a slow current, and when he tasted the water it was only slightly tainted with sulfur. By midnight the water was cool and clean. He landed on a shore of sand and pebbles, stripped to the skin, and gave himself such a scouring as he had never before experienced. He had worn his old trapping shirt and trousers, and after his bath he changed to the outfit which he had kept clean in his pack. Then he built a fire and ate his first meal in two days. The next morning he climbed a tall spruce and surveyed the country about him. Westward there was a broad, low country shut in fifteen or twenty miles away by the foothills. Beyond these foothills rose the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies. He shaved himself, cut his hair, and went on. That night he camped only when he could drive his canoe no farther. The waterway had narrowed to a creek, and he was among the first green shoulders of the hills when he stopped. With another dawn he concealed his canoe in a sheltered place and went on with his pack. For a week he picked his way slowly westward. It was a splendid country into which he had come, and yet he found no sign of human life. The foothills changed to mountains, and he believed he was in the Campbell Range. Also he knew that he had followed the logical trail from the Sulphur country. Yet it was the eighth day before he came upon a sign which told him that another living being had at some time passed that way. What he found were the charred remnants of an old campfire. It had been a white man's fire. He knew that by the size of it. It had been an all-night fire of green logs cut with an axe. On the tenth day he came to the westward slope of the first range and looked down upon one of the most wonderful valleys his eyes had ever beheld. It was more than a valley. It was a broad plain. Fifty miles across it rose the towering majesty of the mightiest of all the Yukon Mountains. And now, though he saw a paradise about him, his heart began to sink within him. It seemed to him inconceivable that in a country so vast he could find the spot for which he was seeking. His one hope lay in finding white men or Indians, someone who might guide him. He traveled slowly over the fifty-mile plain, rich with a verger of green, covered with flowers, a game paradise. Few hunters had come so far out of the Yukon Mountains, he told himself, and none had come from out of the sulfur country. It was a new and undiscovered world. On his map it was a blank space, and there were no signs of people. Ahead of him the Yukon Mountains rose in an impenetrable wall, peak after peak, crested with snow, towering like mighty watchdogs above the clouds. He knew what lay beyond them, the great rivers of the western slope, Dawson City, the gold country and its civilization. But those things were on the other side of the mountains. On his side there was only the vast and undisputed silence of a paradise as yet unclaimed by man. As he went on into this valley there grew upon him a strange and comforting peace. Yet with it there was a steadily increasing belief that he would not find that for which he had come in search. He did not attempt to analyze this belief. It became a part of him, just as his mental tranquility had grown upon him. His one hope of success was that nearer the mountains he might find white men or Indians. He no longer used his compass but guided himself by a cluster of three gigantic peaks. One of these was taller than the other two. As he journeyed his eyes were always returning to it. It fascinated him, impinged itself upon him as the watcher of a million years guarding the valley. He began to think of it as the watcher. Each hour of his progress seemed to bring it a little more intimately to his vision. From his first night's camp in the valley he saw the moon sink behind it. Within him a voice that never died kept whispering to him that this mountain, greater than all the others, had been Mahet's guardian. Ten thousand times she must have looked at it, as he had looked at it that day, if her home was anywhere this side of the Campbell Range. A hundred miles away she could have seen the watcher on a clear day. On the second day the mountain continued to grow upon Kent. By mid-afternoon it began to take on a new character. The peak of it was in the form of a mighty castle that changed as he advanced. And the two lesser peaks were forming into definite contours. Before the haze of twilight dimmed his vision he knew that what he had seen was not a whimsical invention of his imagination. The watcher had grown into the shape of a mighty human head facing south. A restless excitement possessed him and he travelled on long after dusk. At dawn he was on the trail again. Westward the sky cleared and suddenly he stopped and a cry came from him. The watcher's head was there as if chiseled by the hands of giants. The two smaller peaks had unveiled their mystery. Startling and weird their crests had taken on the form of human heads. One of them was looking north. The other faced the valley. And Kent, his heart pounding, cried to himself, The silent men. He did not hear himself but the thought itself was a tumultuous thing within him. It came upon him like an inundation, a sudden and thrilling inspiration backed by the forces of a visual truth. The valley of silent men. He repeated the words, staring at the three colossal heads in the sky. Somewhere near them, under them, one side or the other, was Mahet's hidden valley. He went on. A strange joy consumed him. In it, at times, his grief was obliterated and it seemed to him in these moments that Mahet must surely be at the valley to greet him when he came to it. But always the tragedy of the death-shoot came back to him. And with it the thought that the three giant heads were watching and would always watch for a beloved lost one who would never return. As the sun went down that day the face bowed to the valley, seemed alive but the fire of a living question sent directly to Kent. Where is she? it asked. Where is she? Where is she? That night Kent did not sleep. The next day there lay ahead of him a low and broken range, the first of the deeper mountains. He climbed this steadily and at noon had reached the crest. And he knew that at last he was looking down into the valley of silent men. It was not a wide valley like the other. On the far side of it three or four miles away rose the huge mountain whose face was looking down upon the green meadows at its foot. Southward Kent could see for a long distance and in the vivid sunlight he saw the shimmer of creeks and little lakes and the rich glow of thick patches of cedar and spruce and balsam scattered like great rugs of velvety luster amid the flowering green of the valley. Northward three or four miles away the range which he had climbed made a sharp twist to the east. And that part of the valley, following the swing of the range, was lost to him. He turned in this direction after he had rested. It was four o'clock when he came to the elbow in the valley and could look down into the hidden part of it. What he saw at first was a giant cup hollowed out of the surrounding mountains, a cup two miles from brim to brim, the end of the valley itself. It took him a few moments to focus his vision so that it would pick up the smaller and more intimate things half a mile under him, and yet, before he had done this, a sound came up to him that set a quiver every nerve in his body. It was the far down, hollow-sounding barking of a dog. The warm golden haze that preceded sunset by the mountains was gathering between him and the valley, but through this he made out after a time evidences of human habitation almost straight under him. There was a small lake out of which ran a shimmering creek, and close to this lake, yet equally near to the base of the mountain on which he was standing, were a number of buildings and a stockade which looked like a toy. He could see no animals, no movement of any kind. Without seeking for a downward trail he began to descend. Again he did not question himself. An overwhelming certainty possessed him. Of all places in the world this must be the valley of silent men. And below him, flooded and half hidden in the elusive sun mist, was Mahat's old home. It seemed to him now that it belonged to him that he was a part of it, that in going to it he was achieving his last great resting place, his final refuge, his own home. And the thought became strangely a part of him that a welcome must be waiting for him there. He hurried until his breath came pantingly between his lips, and he was forced to rest. And at last he found himself where his progress was made afoot at a time, and again and again he was forced to climb back and detour around treacherous slides and precipitous breaks which left sheer falls at his feet. The mist thickened in the valley. The sun sank behind the western peaks, and swiftly after that the gloom of twilight deepened. It was seven o'clock when he came to the edge of the plain, at least a mile below the elbow which shut out the cup in the valley. He was exhausted. His hands were bruised and bleeding. Darkness shut him in when he went on. When he rounded the elbow of the mountain he did not try to keep back the joyous cry that came to his lips. Ahead of him there were lights. A few of them were scattered, but nearest to him he saw a cluster of them, like the glow that comes from a number of illuminated windows. He quickened his pace as he drew nearer to them, and at last he wanted to run. And then something stopped him, and it seemed to him that his heart had risen into his throat and was choking him until he could not breathe. It was a man's voice he heard, calling through the twilight gloom a name. Marrette! Marrette! Marrette! Kent tried to cry out, but his breath came only in a gasp. He felt himself trembling. He reached out his arms, and a strange madness rushed like fire into his brain. Again the voice called, Marrette! Marrette! Marrette! The cup in the valley echoed the name. It rolled softly up the mountainside. The air trembled with it, whispered it, passed it on, and suddenly the madness and Kent found voice, and he shouted, Marrette! Marrette! He ran on, his knees felt weak. He shouted the name again, and the other voice was silent. Things loomed up out of the mist ahead of him between him and the glowing windows. Someone, two people, were advancing to meet him doubtfully, wonderingly. Kent was staggering, but he cried the name again, and this time it was a woman's cry that answered, and one of the two came toward him, swift as a flash of light. Three paces apart they stood, and in that gloom of the after twilight their burning eyes looked at each other, while for a space their bodies remained stricken in the face of this miracle of a great and merciful God. The dead had risen. By a mighty effort Kent reached out his arms, and Marrette swayed to him. When the other man came up he found them crumpled to their knees on the earth, clasped like children in each other's arms. And as Kent raised his face he saw that it was Sandy Mactrigger who was looking down at him, the man whose life he had saved at Athabasca landing. It might have been a minute or an hour. Every vital force that was in him had concentrated into a single consciousness, that the dead had come to life, that it was Marrette Radisson, the flesh and blood and living warmth of her he held in his arms. Like the flash of a picture on a screen he had seen Mactrigger's face close to him, and then his own head was crushed down again, and if the valley had been filled with the roar of cannon he would have heard only one sound, a sobbing voice crying over and over again. James! James! James! It was Mactrigger in the beginning of the starlight who alone looked with clear vision upon the wonder of the thing that was happening. After a little Kent realized that Mactrigger was talking, that a hand was on his shoulder, that the voice was both joyous and insistent, he rose to his feet still holding Marrette her arms clinging to him. Her breath was sobbing and broken, and it was impossible for Kent to speak. He seemed to stumble over the distance between them and the light with Mactrigger on the other side of Marrette. It was Mactrigger who opened a door and they came into a glow of lamp-light. It was a great, strange-looking room they entered. And over the threshold Marrette's hands dropped from Kent and Kent stepped back so that in the light they faced each other, and in that moment came the marvellous readjustment from shock and disbelief to a glorious certainty. Again Kent's brain was as clear as the day he faced death at the head of the shoot. And swift as a hot barb a fear leaped into him as his eyes met the eyes of the girl. She was terribly changed. Her face was white with a whiteness that startled him. It was thin. Her eyes were great slumbering pools of violet, almost black in the lamp-glow, and her hair piled high on her head as he had seen at that first day at Cardigans added to the tell-tale pallor in her cheeks. A hand trembled at her throat and its thinness frightened him. For a space, a flash of seconds, she looked at him as if possessed of the subconscious fear that he was not Jim Kent. And then slowly her arms opened and she reached them out to him. She did not smile, she did not cry out, she did not speak his name now. But her arms went around his neck as he took her to him and her face dropped on his breast. He looked at Mactrigger. A woman was standing beside him, a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, and she had laid a hand on Mactrigger's arm. Kent, looking at them, understood. The woman came to him. I had better take her now, Monsieur, she said. Malcolm will tell you. And a little later you may see her again. Her voice was low and soft. At the sound of it Marat raised her head and her two hands stalled to Kent's cheeks in their old sweet way, and she whispered, Kiss me, James, my James, kiss me. End of Chapter 25. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 26 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 26. A little later, clasping hands in the lamp-glow, Kent and Sandy Mactrigger stood alone in the big room. And their hand-clasp was the warm thrill of strong men met in an immutable brotherhood. Each had faced death for the other. Yet this thought, subconsciously and forever a part of them, expressed itself only in the grip of their fingers and in the understanding that lay deep in their eyes. In Kent's face the great question was of Marat. Mactrigger saw the fear of it and slowly he smiled, a glad and yet an anxious smile as he looked toward the door through which Marat and the older woman had gone. Thank God you have come in time, he said, still holding Kent's hand. She thought you were dead. And I know, Kent, that it was killing her. We had to watch her at night. Sometimes she would wander out into the valley. She said she was looking for you. It was that way to-night. Kent gulped hard. I understand now, he said. It was the living soul of her that was pulling me here. I—he took his pack with its precious contents from his shoulders, listening to Mactrigger. They sat down. What Mactrigger was saying seemed of trifling consequence beside the fact that Marat was somewhere beyond the other door, alive, and that he would see her again very soon. He did not see why Mactrigger should tell him that the older woman was his wife. Even the fact that a splendid chance had thrown Marat upon a log wedged between two rocks in the chute, and that this log, breaking away, had carried her to the opposite side of the river, miles below, was trivial with the thought that only a door separated them now. But he listened. He heard Mactrigger tell how Marat had searched for him those days when he was lost in fever at André Boillot's cabin, how she had given him up for dead, and how in those same days LaCelle's brigade had floated down, and she had come north with it. Later he would marvel over these things, but now he listened, and his eyes turned toward the door. It was then that Mactrigger drove something home. It was like a shot piercing Kent's brain. Mactrigger was speaking quietly of O'Connor, he said, but you probably came by way of Fort Simpson, Kent, and O'Connor has told you all this. It was he who brought Marat back home through the Sulphur country. O'Connor! Kent sprang to his feet. It took Mactrigger but a moment to read the truth in his face. Good God! Do you mean to tell me you don't know, Kent? He whispered tensely, rising in front of the other. Haven't you seen O'Connor? Haven't you come in touch with the police anywhere within the last year? Don't you know? I know nothing, breathed Kent. For a space Mactrigger stared at him in amazement. I have been in hiding, said Kent. All this time I have been keeping away from the police. Mactrigger drew a deep breath. Again his hands gripped Kent's and his voice was incredulous, filled with a great wonder. And you have come to her, to her old home, believing that Marat killed Kedsty. It is hard to believe, and yet into his face came suddenly a look of grief, almost of pain, and Kent, following his eyes, saw that he was looking at a big stone fireplace in the end of the room. It was O'Connor who worked the thing out last winter, he said, speaking with an effort. I must tell you before you see her again. You must understand everything. It will not do to have her tell you. See, Kent followed him to the fireplace. From the shelf over the stone work Mactrigger took a picture and gave it to him. It was a snapshot, the picture of a bareheaded man standing in the open with the sun shining on him. A low cry broke from Kent's lips. It was the great gray ghost of a man he had seen in the lightning flare that night from the window of his hiding place in Kedsty's bungalow. My brother, said Mactrigger chokingly, I loved him. For forty years we were comrades, and Marat belonged to us half and half. It was he who killed John Barkley, and then after a moment in which Mactrigger fought to speak steadily he added, and it was he, my brother, who also killed Inspector Kedsty. For a matter of seconds there was a dead silence between them. Mactrigger looked into the fireplace instead of at Kent. Then he said, he killed those men, but he didn't murder them, Kent. It couldn't be called that. It was justice, single man justice, without going to law. If it wasn't for Marat I wouldn't tell you about it, not the horrible part of it. I don't like to bring it up in my memory. It happened years ago. I was not married then, but my brother was ten years older than I and had a wife. I think that Marat loves you as Marie loved Donald. And Donald's love was more than that. It was worship. We came into the new mountain country, the three of us, even before the big strikes at Dawson and Bonanza. It was a wild country, a savage country, and there were few women in it. But Marie came with Donald. She was beautiful, with hair and eyes like Marat's. That was the tragedy of it. I won't tell you the details. They were terrible. It happened while Donald and I were out on a hunt. Three men, white men, remember that, Kent, white men, came out of the north and stopped at the cabin. When we returned, what we found there drove us mad. Marie died in Donald's arms. And leaving her there alone, we set out after the white-skinned brutes who had destroyed her. Only a blizzard saved them, Kent. Their trail was fresh when the storm came. Had it held off another two hours, I, too, would have killed. From that day Donald and I became man-hunters. We traced the back trail of the three friends and discovered who they were. Two years later Donald found one of the three in the Yukon. And before he killed him, he made him verify the names of the other two. It was a long search after that, Kent. It has covered thirty years. Donald grew old faster than I, and I knew, after a time, that he was strangely mad. He would be gone for months at a time, always searching for the two men. Ten years passed. And then, one day, in the deep of winter, we came on a cabin home that had been stricken with the plague, the smallpox. It was the home of Pierre Radisson and his wife Andrea. Both were dead. But there was a little child still living, almost a babe in arms. We took her, Donald and I. The child was Maret. McGregor had spoken almost in a monotone. He had not raised his eyes from the ash of the fireplace. But now he looked up suddenly at Kent. We worshipped her from the beginning, he said, his voice a bit husky. I hoped that love for her would save Donald. It did, in a way, but it did not cure his madness, his desire for vengeance. We came farther east. We found this marvelous valley and gold in the mountains untouched by other men. We built here, and I hoped even more that the glory of this new world we had discovered would help Donald to forget. I married, and my wife loved Maret. We had a child, and then another, and both died. We loved Maret more than ever after that. And my wife was the daughter of a missioner and capable of educating Maret up to a certain point. You will find this place filled with all kinds of books and reading and music. But the time came when we thought we must send Maret to Montreal. It broke her heart. And then, a long time after, McGregor paused a moment, looking into Kent's eyes. And then one day Donald came in from Dawson City, terrible in his madness, and told us that he had found his men. One of them was John Barkley, the rich Timberman, and the other was Kedsty, Inspector of Police at Athabasca Landing. Kent made no effort to speak. His amazement, as McGregor had gone on, was beyond the expression of words. The night held for him a cumulative shock, the discovery that Maret was not dead, but alive, and now the discovery that he, Jim Kent, was no longer a hunted man, and that it was O'Connor, his old comrade, who had run the truth down. With dry lips he simply nodded, urging McGregor to continue. I knew what would happen if Donald went after Barkley and Kedsty, said the older man, and it was impossible to hold him back. He was mad, clean, mad. There was just one thing for me to do. I left here first, with the intention of warning the two brutes who had killed Donald's wife. I knew, with the evidence in our hands, they could do nothing but make a getaway. No matter how rich or powerful they were, our evidence was complete, and through many years we had kept track of the movements of our witnesses. I tried to explain to Donald that we could send them to prison, but there was but one thought in his poor, sick mind to kill. I was younger and beat himself. And after that I made my fatal mistake. I thought I was far enough ahead of him to get down to the line of rail and back before he arrived. You see, I figured his love for Maret would take him to Montreal first, and I had made up my mind to tell her everything so that she might understand the necessity of holding him if he went to her. I wrote everything to her, and told her to remain in Montreal. How she did that, you know. She set out for the north as soon as she received my letter. McGregor's shoulders hunched lower. Well, you know what happened, Kent. Donald got ahead of me after all. I came the day after Barkley was killed. I took it as a kind fate that the day preceding the killing I shot a grouse for my dinner, and as the bird was only wounded when I picked it up I got blood on the sleeves of my coat. I was arrested. Kedzty, everyone was sure they had the real man. And I kept quiet except to maintain my innocence. I could say nothing that would turn the law on Donald's trail. After that things happened quickly. You, my friend, made your false confession to save one who had done you a poor service years ago. Almost simultaneously with that, Marat had come. She came quietly in the night and went straight to Kedzty. She told him everything, showed him the written evidence, telling him this evidence was in the hands of others and would be used if anything happened to her. Her power over him was complete. As the price of her secrecy she demanded my release, and in that black hour your confession gave Kedzty his opportunity. He knew you were lying. He knew it was Donald who had killed Barkley, yet he was willing to sacrifice you to save himself. And Marat remained in his house, waiting and watching for Donald, while I searched for him on the trails. That is why she secretly lived in Kedzty's house. She knew that Donald would come there sooner or later, if I did not find him and get him away, and she was plotting how to save you. She loved you, Kent, from that first hour she came to you in the hospital, and she tried to exact your freedom also as an added price for her secrecy. But Kedzty had become like a corner tiger. If he freed you he saw his whole world crumbling under his feet. He too went a little mad, I think. He told Marat that he would not free you, that he would go to the hangman first. Then Kent came the night of your freedom, and a little later Donald came to Kedzty's home. It was he whom you saw that night out in the storm. He entered and killed Kedzty. Something dragged Marat down to the room that night. She found Kedzty in his chair dead. Donald was gone. It was then that you found her there. Kent, she loved you, and you will never know how her heart bled when she let you think that she had killed Kedzty. She has told me everything. It was her fear for Donald, her desire to keep all possible suspicion from him until he was safe, that compelled her not to confide even in you. Later, when she knew that Donald must be safe, she was going to tell you. And then you were separated at the chute. McGregor paused, and Kent saw him choke back a grief that was still like the fresh cut of a knife in his heart. And O'Connor found out all this? McGregor nodded. Yes. He defied Kedzty's command to go to Fort Simpson and was on his way back to Athabasca Landing when he found my brother. It is strange how all things happened, Kent, but I guess God must have met it that way. Donald was dying. And in dying, for a space, his old reason returned to him. It was from him before he died that O'Connor learned everything. The story is known everywhere now. It is marvelous that you did not hear. There came an interruption, the opening of a door. Anne McGregor stood looking at them where a little time before she had disappeared with Marette. There was a glad smile in her face. Her dark eyes were glowing with a new happiness. First they rested on McGregor's face, and then on Kent's. Marette is much better, she said in her soft voice. She is waiting to see you, Monsieur Kent. Will you come now? Like one in a dream Kent went toward her. He picked up his pack, for with its precious contents it had become to him like his own flesh and blood. And as the woman led the way and Kent followed her, McGregor did not move from the fireplace. In a little while Anne McGregor came back into the room. Her beautiful eyes were aglow. She was smiling softly and putting her arms about the shoulders of the man at the fireplace. She whispered, I have looked at the night through the window, Malcolm. I think that the stars are bigger and brighter than they have been in a long time. And the watcher seems like a living God up in the sky. Come, please! She took his hand and Malcolm went with her. Over their heads burned a glory of stars. The wind came gently up the valley, cool with the freshness of the mountaintops, sweet with the smell of meadow and flowers. And when the woman pointed through the glow, Malcolm McGregor looked up at the watcher and for an instant he fancied that he saw what she had seen. Something that was life instead of death. A glow of understanding and of triumph in the mighty face of stone above the lace mists of the clouds. For a long time they walked on, and deep in the heart of the woman a voice cried out again and again that the watcher knew and that it was a living joy she saw up there. For up to that unmoving and voiceless God of the mountains she had cried and laughed and sung and even prayed. And with her Marette had also done these things until at last the pulse and beat of women souls had given a spirit to a form of rock. Back in the chateau which Malcolm McGregor and his brother Donald had built of logs, in a room whose windows faced the watcher himself, Marette was unveiling the last of mystery for Jim Kent. And this too was her hour of triumph. Her lips were red and warm with the fluff brought there by Kent's love. Her face was like the wild roses he had crushed under his feet all that day. For in this hour the world had come to her and had prostrated itself at her feet. The sacred contents of the pack were in her lap as she leaned back in the great blanketed and pillowed chair that had been her Invalid's nest for many days. But it was an Invalid's nest no longer. The floods of life were pounding through her body again and in that hour when Malcolm McGregor and his wife were gone Kent looked upon the miracle of its change. And now Marette gave to him a little packet and while Kent opened it she raised both hands to her head and unbound her hair so that it fell about her in shining and glorious confusion. Kent, unwrapping a last bit of tissue paper, found in his hands a long tress of hair. See, James, it has grown fast since I cut it that night. She leaned a little toward him, parting her hair with slim white fingers so that he saw again where the hair had been clipped the night of Kedsty's death. And then she said, You may keep it always if you want to, James, for I cut it from my head when I left you in the room below and when you almost believed I had killed Kedsty. It was this, she gave him another packet and her lips tightened a little as Kent unwrapped it, and another tress of hair shimmered in the lamp glow. That was Father Donald's, she whispered. It was all he had left of Marie, his wife, and that night when Kedsty died, I understand, cried Kent, stopping her. He choked Kedsty with it until he was dead. And when I found it around Kedsty's neck, you let me think it was yours to save Father Donald. She nodded. Yes, James, if the police had come they would have thought I was guilty. I planned to let them think so until Father Donald was safe. But all the time I had here in my breast this other tress which would prove that I was innocent when the time came. And now, James, she smiled at him again and reached out her hands. Oh, I feel so strong and I want to take you out now and show you my valley, James, our valley, yours and mine in the starlight. Not to Maro, James, but to night, now! A little later the watcher looked down on them, even as it had looked down on another man and another woman who had preceded them. But the stars were bigger and brighter, and the white cap of snow that rested on the watcher's head, like a crown, caught the faint gleam of a faraway light, and after that, slowly and wonderfully, other snow-crusted mountaintops caught that greeting radiance of the moon. But it was the watcher who stood out like a mighty god among them all, and when they came to the elbow in the plane Marat drew Kent down beside her on a great flat rock and laughed softly as she held his hand tightly in her lap. Always, from a little child, I have sat and played on this rock, with the watcher looking like that, she said in a low voice. I have grown to love him, James, and I have always believed that he was gazing off there night and day into the east, watching for something that was coming to me. Now I know. It was you, James. And, James, when I was away, down there in the big city, her fingers gripped his thumb in their old way and Kent waited. It was the watcher that made me want to come home most of all, she went on, a bit of tremble in her voice. Oh, I grew lonely for him and I could see him in my dreams at night, watching, watching, watching, and sometimes even calling me. James, do you see that hump on his left shoulder like a great epaulet? Yes, I see, said Kent. Beyond that, on a straight line from here, hundreds of miles away, are Dawson City, the Yukon, the big gold country, men, women, civilization. Father Malcolm and Father Donald have never found but one trail to this side of the mountains, and I have been over it three times to Dawson. But the watcher's back is on those things. Sometimes I imagine it was he who built those great ramparts through which few men come. He wants this valley alone, and so do I, alone with you and with my people. Kent drew her close in his arms. When you are stronger, he whispered, we will go over that hidden trail together past the watcher toward Dawson, for it must be that over there we will find a missioner. He paused. Please go on, James, and you will be my wife. Yes, yes, James, forever and ever. But, James, her arms crept up about his neck, very soon it will be the first of August. Yes, and in that month there come through the mountains each year a man and a woman to visit us, Mother Anne's father and Mother. And Mother Anne's father, yes, is a missioner, James, and Kent, looking up in this hour of his triumph and joy, believed that in the watcher's face he caught for an instant the passing radiance of a smile. The end. End of chapter 26, recording by Roger Maline. The Valley of Silent Men by James Oliver Kerwood