Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant - "Yvette"

John Greenleaf Whittier - "Poems in Wartime"

William Shakespeare - "The Tragedie of Julius Caesar"

J. Storer Clouston - "Vandrad the Viking"

The Valley Of Silent Men

J >> James Oliver Curwood >> The Valley Of Silent Men




They drew swiftly nearer to the light, for it was not far from the
knoll to Kedsty's place. Kent's mind leaped ahead. A little west
by north from the inspector's bungalow was Kim's Bayou and it was
undoubtedly to the forest trail over which she had gone at least
once before, on the night of the mysterious assault upon Mooie,
that Marette was leading him. Questions began to rush upon him
now, immediate demanding questions. They were going to the river.
They must be going to the river. It was the quickest and surest
way of escape. Had Marette prepared for that? And was she going
with him?

He had no time to answer. Their feet struck the gravel path
leading to the door of Kedsty's place, and straight up this path
the girl turned, straight toward the light blazing in the window.
Then, to his amazement, he heard in the sweep of storm her voice
crying out in glad triumph,

"We're home!"

Home! His breath came in a sudden gulp. He was more than
astounded. He was shocked. Was she mad or playing an amazingly
improper joke? She had freed him from a cell to lead him to the
home of the Inspector of Police, the deadliest enemy the world now
held for him. He stopped, and Marette Radisson tugged at his hand,
pulling him after her, insisting that he follow. She was clutching
his thumb as though she thought he might attempt to escape.

"It is safe, M'sieu Jeems," she cried. "Don't be afraid!"

M'sieu Jeems! And the laughing note of mockery in her voice! He
rallied himself and followed her up the three steps to the door.
Her hand found the latch, the door opened, and swiftly they were
inside. The lamp in the window was close to them, but for a space
he could not see because of the water in his eyes. He blinked it
out, drew a hand across his face, and looked at Marette. She stood
three or four paces from him. Her face was very white, and she was
panting as if hard-run for breath, but her eyes were shining, and
she was smiling at him. The water was running from her in streams.

"You are wet," she said. "And I am afraid you will catch cold.
Come with me!"

Again she was making fun of him just as she had made fun of him at
Cardigan's! She turned, and he ran upstairs behind her. At the top
she waited for him, and as he came up, she reached out her hand,
as if apologizing for having taken it from him when they entered
the bungalow. He held it again as she led him down the hall to a
door farthest from the stair. This she opened, and they entered.
It was dark inside, and the girl withdrew her hand again, and Kent
heard her moving across the room. In that darkness a new and
thrilling emotion possessed him. The air he was breathing was not
the air he had breathed in the hall. In it was the sweet scent of
flowers, and of something else--the faint and intangible perfume
of a woman's room. He waited, staring. His eyes were wide when a
match leaped into flame in Marette's fingers. Then he stood in the
glow of a lamp.

He continued to stare in the stupidity of a shock to which he was
not accustomed. Marette, as if to give him time to acquaint
himself with his environment, was taking off her raincoat. Under
it her slim little figure was dry, except where the water had run
down from her uncovered head to her shoulders. He noticed that she
wore a short skirt, and boots, adorably small boots of splendidly
worked caribou. And then suddenly she came toward him with both
hands reaching out to him.

"Please shake hands and say you're glad," she said. "Don't look
so--so--frightened. This is my room and you are safe here."

He held her hands tight, staring into the wonderful, violet eyes
that were looking at him with the frank and unembarrassed
directness of a child's. "I--I don't understand," he struggled.
"Marette, where is Kedsty?"

"He should be returning very soon."

"And he knows you are here, of course?"

She nodded. "I have been here for a month."

Kent's hands closed tighter about hers. "I--I don't understand,"
he repeated. "Tonight Kedsty will know that it was you who rescued
me and you who shot Constable Willis. Good God, we must lose no
time in getting away!"

"There is great reason why Kedsty dare not betray my presence in
his house," she said quietly. "He would die first! And he will not
suspect that I have brought you to my room, that an escaped
murderer is hiding under the very roof of the Inspector of Police!
They will search for you everywhere but here! Isn't it splendid?
He planned it all, every move, even to the screaming in front of
your cell--"

"You mean--Kedsty?"

She withdrew her hands and stepped back from him, and again he saw
in her eyes a flash of the fire that had come into them when she
leveled her gun at the three men in the prison alcove. "No, not
Kedsty. He would hang you, and he would kill me, if he dared. I
mean that great, big, funny-looking friend of yours, M'sieu
Fingers!"





CHAPTER XIV


The manner in which Kent stared at Marette Radisson after her
announcement that it was Dirty Fingers who had planned his escape
must have been, he thought afterward, little less than imbecile.
He had wronged Fingers, he believed. He had called him a coward
and a backslider. In his mind he had reviled him for helping to
raise his hopes to the highest pitch, only to smash them in the
end. And all the time Dirty Fingers had been planning this! Kent
began to grin. The thing was clear in a moment--that is, the
immediate situation was clear--or he thought it was. But there
were questions--one, ten, a hundred of them. They wanted to pile
over the end of his tongue, questions that had little or nothing
to do with Kedsty. He saw nothing now but Marette.

She had begun to take down her hair. It fell about her in wet,
shining masses. Kent had never seen anything like it. It clung to
her face, her neck, her shoulders and arms, and shrouded her
slender body to her hips, lovely in its confusion. Little drops of
water glistened in it like diamonds in the lamp glow, trickling
down and dropping to the floor. It was like a glowing coat of
velvety sable beaten by storm. Marette ran her arms up through it,
shaking it out in clouds, and a mist of rain leaped out from it,
some of it striking Kent in the face. He forgot Fingers. He forgot
Kedsty. His brain flamed only with the electrifying nearness of
her. It was the thought of her that had inspired the greatest hope
in him. It was his dreams of her, somewhere on the Big River, that
had given him his great courage to believe in the ultimate of
things. And now time and space had taken a leap backward. She was
not four or five hundred miles north. There was no long quest
ahead of him. She was here, within a few feet of him, tossing the
wet from that glorious hair he had yearned to touch, brushing it
out now, with her back toward him, in front of her mirror.

And as he sat there, uttering no word, looking at her, the demands
of the immense responsibility that had fallen upon him and of the
great fight that lay ahead pounded within him with naked fists.
Fingers had planned. She had executed. It was up to him to finish.

He saw her, not as a creature to win, but as a priceless
possession. Her fight had now become his fight. The rain was
beating against the window near him. Out there was blackness, the
river, the big world. His blood leaped with the old fighting fire.
They were going tonight; they must be going tonight! Why should
they wait? Why should they waste time under Kedsty's roof when
freedom lay out there for the taking? He watched the swift
movements of her hand, listened to the silken rustle of the brush
as it smoothed out her long hair. Bewilderment, reason, desire for
action fought inside him.

Suddenly she faced him again. "It has just this moment occurred to
me," she said, "that you haven't said 'Thank you.'"

So suddenly that he startled her he was at her side. He did not
hesitate this time, as he had hesitated in his room at Cardigan's
place. He caught her two hands in his, and with them he felt the
soft, damp crush of her hair between his fingers. Words tumbled
from his lips. He could not remember afterward all that he said.
Her eyes widened, and they never for an instant left his own.
Thank her! He told her what had happened to him--in the heart and
soul of him--from the hour she had come to him at Cardigan's. He
told her of dreams and plans, of his determination to find her
again after he had escaped, if it took him all his life. He told
her of Mercer, of his discovery of her visit to Kim's Bayou, of
his scheme to follow her down the Three Rivers, to seek for her at
Fort Simpson, to follow her to the Valley of Silent Men, wherever
it was. Thank her! He held her hands so tight they hurt, and his
voice trembled. Under the cloud of her hair a slow fire burned in
Marette Radisson's cheeks. But it did not show in her eyes. They
looked at him so steadily, so unfalteringly, that his own face
burned before he had finished what was in his mind to say, and he
freed her hands and stepped back from her again.

"Forgive me for saying all that," he entreated. "But it's true.
You came to me there, at Cardigan's place, like something I'd
always dreamed about, but never expected to find. And you came to
me again, at the cell, like--"

"Yes, I know how I came," she interrupted him. "Through the mud
and the rain, Mr. Kent. And it was so black I lost my way and was
terrified to think that I might not find barracks. I was half an
hour behind Mr. Fingers' schedule. For that reason I think
Inspector Kedsty may return at any moment, and you must not talk
so loud--or so much."

"Lord!" he breathed in a whisper. "I have said a lot in a short
time, haven't I? But it isn't a hundredth part of what I want to
get out of my system. I won't ask the million questions that want
to be asked. But I must know why we are here. Why have we come to
Kedsty's? Why didn't we make for the river? There couldn't be a
better night to get away."

"But it is not so good as the fifth night from now will be," she
said, resuming the task of drying her hair. "On that night you may
go to the river. Our plans were a little upset, you know, by
Inspector Kedsty's change in the date on which you were to leave
for Edmonton. Arrangements have been made so that on the fifth
night you may leave safely."

"And you?"

"I shall remain here." And then she added in a low voice that
struck his heart cold, "I shall remain to pay Kedsty the price
which he will ask for what has happened tonight."

"Good God!" he cried. "Marette!"

She turned on him swiftly. "No, no, I don't mean that he will hurt
me," she cried, a fierce little note in her voice. "I would kill
him before that! I'm sorry I told you. But you must not question
me. You shall not!"

She was trembling. He had never seen her excited like that before,
and as she stood there before him, he knew that he was not afraid
for her in the way that had flashed into his mind. She had not
spoken empty words. She would fight. She would kill, if it was
necessary to kill. And he saw her, all at once, as he had not seen
her before. He remembered a painting which he had seen a long time
ago in Montreal. It was L'Esprit de la Solitude--The Spirit of the
Wild--painted by Conne, the picturesque French-Canadian friend of
Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, and a genius of the far backwoods
who had drawn his inspiration from the heart of the wilderness
itself. And that painting stood before him now in flesh and blood,
its crudeness gone, but the marvelous spirit it had breathed
remaining. Shrouded in her tumbled hair, her lips a little parted,
every line of her slender body vibrant with an emotion which
seemed consuming her, her beautiful eyes aglow with its fire, he
saw in her, as Conne must have seen at another time, the soul of
the great North itself. She seemed to him to breathe of the God's
country far down the Three Rivers; of its almost savage
fearlessness; its beauty, its sunshine, and its storm; its
tragedy, its pathos, and its song. In her was the courage and the
glory of that North. He had seen; and now he felt these things,
and the thrill of them swept over him like an inundation.

He had heard her soft laugh, she had made fun of him when he
thought he was dying; she had kissed him, she had fought for him,
she had clung in terror to his hand when the lightning flashed;
and now she stood with her little hands clenched in her hair, like
a storm about to break. A moment ago she was so near that he had
almost taken her in his arms. Now, in an instant, she had placed
something so vast between them that he would not have dared to
touch her hand or her hair. Like sun and cloud and wind she
changed, and for him each change added to the wonder of her. And
now it was storm. He saw it in her eyes, her hands, her body. He
felt the electrical nearness of it in those low-spoken, trembling
words, "YOU SHALL NOT!" The room seemed surcharged for a moment
with impending shock. And then his physical eyes took in again the
slimness of her, seized upon the alluring smallness of her and the
fact that he could have tossed her to the ceiling without great
effort. And yet he saw her as one sees a goddess.

"No, I won't ask you questions, when you look at me like that," he
said, finding his tongue. "I won't ask you what this price is that
Kedsty may demand, because you're not going to pay it. If you
won't go with me, I won't go. I'd rather stay here and be hung.
I'm not asking you questions, so please don't shoot, but if you
told me the truth, and you belong in the North, you're going back
with me--or I'm not going. I'll not budge an inch."

She drew a deep breath, as if something had greatly relieved her.
Again her violet eyes came out from the shadow into sunlight, and
her trembling mouth suddenly broke into a smile. It was not
apologetic. There was about it a quick and spontaneous gladness
which she made no effort at all to conceal.

"That is nice of you," she said. "I'm glad to hear you say it. I
never knew how pleasant it was to have some one who was willing to
be hung for me. But you will go. And I will not go. There isn't
time to explain all about it just now, for Inspector Kedsty will
be here very soon, and I must dry my hair and show you your
hiding-place--if you have to hide."

She began to brush her hair again. In the mirror Kent caught a
glimpse of the smile still trembling on her lips.

"I'm not questioning you," he guarded himself again, "but if you
could only understand how anxious I am to know where Kedsty is,
how Fingers found you, why you made us believe you were leaving
the Landing and then returned--and--how badly I want to know
something about you--I almost believe you'd talk a little while
you are drying your hair."

"It was Mooie, the old Indian," she said. "It was he who found out
in some way that I was here, and then M'sieu Fingers came himself
one night when the Inspector was away--got in through a window and
simply said that you had sent him, when I was just about to shoot
him. You see, I knew you weren't going to die. Kedsty had told me
that. I was going to help you in another way, if M'sieu Fingers
hadn't come. Inspector Kedsty was over there tonight, at his
cabin, when the thing happened down there. It was a part of
Fingers' scheme--to keep him out of the way."

Suddenly she grew rigid. The brush remained poised in her hair.
Kent, too, heard the sound that she had heard. It was a loud
tapping at one of the curtained windows, the tapping of some
metallic object. And that window was fifteen feet above the
ground!

With a little cry the girl threw down her brush, ran to the
window, and raised and lowered the curtain once. Then she turned
to Kent, swiftly dividing her hair into thick strands and weaving
them into a braid.

"It is Mooie," she cried. "Kedsty is coming!"

She caught his hand and hurried him toward the head of the bed,
where two long curtains were strung on a wire. She drew these
apart. Behind them were what seemed to Kent an innumerable number
of feminine garments.

"You must hide in them, if you have to," she said, the excited
little tremble in her voice again. "I don't think it will come to
that, but if it does, you must! Bury yourself way back in them,
and keep quiet. If Kedsty finds you are here--"

She looked into his eyes, and it seemed to Kent that there was
something which was very near to fear in them now.

"If he should find you here, it would mean something terrible for
me," she went on, her hands creeping to his arms. "I can not tell
you what it is now, but it would be worse than death. Will you
promise to stay here, no matter what happens down there, no matter
what you may hear? Will you--Mr. Kent?"

"Not if you call me Mr. Kent," he said, something thickening in
his throat.

"Will you--Jeems? Will you--no matter what happens--if I promise--
when I come back--to kiss you?"

Her hands slipped almost caressingly from his arms, and then she
had turned swiftly and was gone through the partly open door,
closing it after her, before he could give his promise.





CHAPTER XV


For a space he stood where she had left him, staring at the door
through which she had gone. The nearness of her in those last few
seconds of her presence, the caressing touch of her hands, what he
had seen in her eyes, her promise to kiss him if he did not reveal
himself--these things, and the thought of the splendid courage
that must be inspiring her to face Kedsty now, made him blind even
to the door and the wall at which he was apparently looking. He
saw only her face, as he had seen it in that last moment--her
eyes, the tremble of her lips, and the fear which she had not
quite hidden from him. She was afraid of Kedsty. He was sure of
it. For she had not smiled; there was no flicker of humor in her
eyes, when she called him Jeems, an intimate use of the names Jim
and James in the far North. It was not facetiously that she had
promised to kiss him. An almost tragic seriousness had possessed
her. And it was that seriousness that thrilled him--that, and the
amazing frankness with which she had coupled the name Jeems with
the promise of her lips. Once before she had called him Jeems. But
it was M'sieu Jeems then, and there had been a bit of taunting
laughter in her voice. Jim or James meant nothing, but Jeems--He
had heard mothers call little children that, in moments of
endearment. He knew that wives and sweethearts used it in that
same way. For Jim and James were not uncommon names up and down
the Three Rivers, even among the half-breeds and French, and Jeems
was the closer and more intimate thing bred of it.

His heart was thumping riotously as he went to the door and
listened. A little while ago, when she faced him with flashing
eyes, commanding him not to question her, he had felt an abyss
under his feet. Now he was on a mountain. And he knew that no
matter what he heard, unless it was her cry for help, he would not
go down.

After a little he opened the door a mere crack so that sound might
come to him. She had not forbidden that. Through the crack he
could see a dim glow of light in the lower hall. But he heard no
sound, and it occurred to him that old Mooie could still run
swiftly, and that it might be some time before Kedsty would
arrive.

As he waited, he looked about the room. His first impression was
that Marette must have lived in it for a long time. It was a
woman's room, without the newness of sudden and unpremeditated
occupancy. He knew that formerly it had been Kedsty's room, but
nothing of Kedsty remained in it now. And then, as his wondering
eyes beheld the miracle, a number of things struck him with
amazing significance. He no longer doubted that Marette Radisson
was of the far Northland. His faith in that was absolute. If there
had been a last question in his mind, it was wiped away because
she called him Jeems. Yet this room seemed to give the lie to his
faith. Fascinated by his discovery of things, he drew away from
the door and stood over the dressing-table in front of the mirror.

Marette had not prepared the room for him, and her possessions
were there. It did not strike him as sacrilege to look at them,
the many intimate little things that are mysteriously used in the
process of a lady's toilette. It was their number and variety that
astounded him. He might have expected them in the boudoir of the
Governor General's daughter at Ottawa, but not here--and much less
farther north. What he saw was of exquisite material and
workmanship. And then, as if attracted by a magnet, his eyes were
drawn to something else. It was a row of shoes neatly and
carefully arranged on the floor at one side of the dressing-table.

He stared at them, astounded. Never had he seen such an array of
feminine footwear intended for the same pair of feet. And it was
not Northern footwear. Every individual little beauty in that
amazing row stood on a high heel! Their variety was something to
which he had long been a stranger. There were buttoned boots,
laced boots, brown boots, black boots, and white boots, with
dangerously high and fragile looking heels; there were dainty
little white kid slippers, slippers with bows, slippers with cut
steel buckles, and slippers with dainty ribbon ties; there were
high-heeled oxfords and high-heeled patent leather pumps! He
gasped. He reached over, moved by an automatic sort of impulse,
and took a satiny little pump in his hand.

The size of it gave him a decidedly pleasant mental shock, and,
beginning to feel like one prying into a sleeper's secrets, he
looked inside it. The size was there--number three. And it had
come from Favre's in Montreal! One after another he looked inside
half a dozen others. And all of them had come from Favre's in
Montreal. The little shoes, more than all else that he had seen or
that had happened, sent a question pounding through his brain. Who
was Marette Radisson?

And that question was followed by other questions, until they
tumbled over one another in his head. If she was from Montreal,
why was she going north? If she belonged in the North, if she was
a part of it, why was she taking all of this apparently worthless
footwear with her? Why had she come to Athabasca Landing? What was
she to Kedsty? Why was she hiding under his roof? Why--

He stopped himself, trying to find some one answer in all that
chaos of questions. It was impossible for him to take his eyes
from the shoes. A thought seized him. Ludicrously he dropped upon
his knees in front of the row and with a face growing hotter each
moment examined them all. But he wanted to know. And the discovery
he made was that most of the footwear had been worn, some of it so
slightly, however, that the impression of the foot was barely
visible.

He rose to his feet and continued his inquiry. Of course she had
expected him to look about. One couldn't help seeing, unless one
were blind. He would have cut off a hand before opening one of the
dressing-table drawers. But Marette herself had told him to hide
behind the curtains if it became necessary, and it was an
excusable caution for him to look behind those curtains now, to
see what sort of hiding-place he had. He returned to the door
first and listened. There was still no sound from below. Then he
drew the curtains apart, as Marette had drawn them. Only he looked
longer. He would tell her about it when she returned, if the act
needed an apology.

His impression was a man's impression. What he saw was a
billowing, filmy mass of soft stuff, and out of it there greeted
him the faintest possible scent of lilac sachet powder. He closed
the curtains with a deep breath of utter joy and of consternation.
The two emotions were a jumble to him. The shoes, all that mass of
soft stuff behind the curtains, were exquisitely feminine. The
breath of perfume had come to him straight out of a woman's soul.
There were seduction and witchery to it. He saw Marette, an
enrapturing vision of loveliness, floating before his eyes in that
sacred and mysterious vestment of which he had stolen a half-
frightened glimpse. In white--the white, cobwebby thing of laces
and embroidery that had hung straight before his eyes--in white--
with her glorious black hair, her violet eyes, her--

And then it was that the incongruity of the thing, the almost
sheer impossibility of it, clashed in upon his vision. Yet his
faith was not shaken. Marette Radisson was of the North. He could
not disbelieve that, even in the face of these amazing things that
confronted him.

Suddenly he heard a sound that was like the explosion of a gun
under his feet. It was the opening and closing of the hall door--
but mostly the closing. The slam of it shook the house and rattled
the glass in the windows. Kedsty had returned, and he was in a
rage. Kent extinguished the light so that the room was in
darkness. Then he went to the door. He could hear the quick, heavy
tread of Kedsty's feet After that came the closing of a second
door, followed by the rumble of Kedsty's voice. Kent was
disappointed.

The Inspector of Police and Marette were in a room too far distant
for him to distinguish what was said. But he knew that Kedsty had
returned to barracks and had discovered what had happened there.
After an interval his voice was a steady rumble. It rose higher.
He heard the crash of a chair. Then the voice ceased, and after it
came the tramping of Kedsty's feet. Not once did he catch the
sound of Marette's voice, but he was sure that in the interval of
silence she was talking. Then Kedsty's voice broke forth more
furiously than before. Kent's fingers dug into the sill of the
door. Each moment added to his conviction that Marette was in
danger. It was not physical violence he feared. He did not believe
Kedsty capable of perpetrating that upon a woman. It was fear that
he would take her to barracks. The fact that Marette had told him
there was a powerful reason why Kedsty would not do this failed to
assure him. For she had also told him that Kedsty would kill her,
if he dared. He held himself in readiness. At a cry from her, or
the first move on Kedsty's part to take her from the bungalow, he
would give battle in spite of Marette's warning.

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