The Courage of Marge O'Doone, James Oliver Curwood [smart books to read .txt] 📗

it in a silent, hungry, nibbling horde. David tried to count them. There must have been twenty. He felt an impulse to scoop them up in something, Tavish's water pail for instance, and pitch them out into the night. The creatures became quieter after their gorge on bannock crumbs. Most of them disappeared.
For a long time David and the Missioner sat smoking their pipes, waiting for Tavish. Father Roland was puzzled and yet he was assured. He was puzzled because Tavish's snow shoes hung on their wooden peg in one of the cross logs and his rifle was in its rack over the bunk.
"I didn't know he had another pair of snow shoes," he said. "Still, it is quite a time since I have seen him--a number of weeks. I came down in the early November snow. He is not far away or he would have taken his rifle. Probably setting a few fresh poison-baits after the storm."
They heard the sweep of a low wind. It often came at night after a storm, usually from off the Barrens to the northwest. Something thumped gently against the outside of the cabin, a low, peculiarly heavy and soft sort of sound, like a padded object, with only the log wall separating it from the bunk. Their ears caught it quite distinctly.
"Tavish hangs his meat out there," the Missioner explained, observing the sudden direction of David's eyes. "A haunch of moose, or, if he has been lucky, of caribou. I had forgotten Tavish's cache or we might have saved our meat."
He ran a hand through his thick, grayish hair until it stood up about his head like a brush.
David tried not to reveal his restlessness as they waited. At each new sound he hoped that what he heard was Tavish's footsteps. He had quite decidedly planned his action. Tavish would enter, and of course there would be greetings, and possibly half an hour or more of smoking and talk before he brought up the Firepan Creek country, unless, as might fortuitously happen, Father Roland spoke of it ahead of him. After that he would show Tavish the picture, and he would stand well in the light so that it would be impressed upon Tavish all at once. He noticed that the chimney of the lamp was sooty and discoloured, and somewhat to the Missioner's amusement he took it off and cleaned it. The light was much more satisfactory then. He wandered about the cabin, scrutinizing, as if out of curiosity, Tavish's belongings. There was not much to discover. Close to the bunk there was a small battered chest with riveted steel ribs. He wondered whether it was unlocked, and what it contained. As he stood over it he could hear plainly the _thud, thud, thud_, of the thing outside--the haunch of meat--as though some one were tapping fragments of the Morse code in a careless and broken sort of way. Then, without any particular motive, he stepped into the dark corner at the end of the bunk. An agonized squeak came from under his foot, and he felt something small and soft flatten out, like a wad of dough. He jumped back. An exclamation broke from his lips. It was unpleasant, though the soft thing was nothing more than a mouse.
"Confound it!" he said.
Father Roland was listening to the slow, pendulum-like _thud_, _thud_, _thud_, against the logs of the cabin. It seemed to come more distinctly as David crushed out the life of the mouse, as if pounding a protest upon the wall.
"Tavish has hung his meat low," he said concernedly. "Quite careless of him, unless it is a very large quarter."
He began slowly to undress.
"We might as well turn in," he suggested. "When Tavish shows up the dogs will raise bedlam and wake us. Throw out Tavish's blankets and put your own in his bunk. I prefer the floor. Always did. Nothing like a good, smooth floor...."
He was interrupted by the opening of the cabin door. The Cree thrust in his head and shoulders. He came no farther. His eyes were afire with the smouldering gleam of garnets. He spoke rapidly in his native tongue to the Missioner, gesturing with one lean, brown hand as he talked. Father Roland's face became heavy, furrowed, perplexed. He broke in suddenly, in Cree, and when he ceased speaking Mukoki withdrew slowly. The last David saw of the Indian was his shifting, garnet-like eyes, disappearing like beads of blackish flame.
"_Pest!_" cried the Little Missioner, shrugging his shoulders in disgust. "The dogs are uneasy. Mukoki says they smell death. They sit on their haunches, he says, staring--staring at nothing, and whining like puppies. He is going back with them to the other side of the ridge. If it will ease his soul, let him go."
"I have heard of dogs doing that," said David.
"Of course they will do it," shot back Father Roland unhesitatingly. "Northern dogs always do it, and especially mine. They are accustomed to death. Twenty times in a winter, and sometimes more, I care for the dead. They always go with me, and they can smell death in the wind. But here--why, it is absurd! There is nothing dead here--unless it is that mouse, and Tavish's meat!" He shook himself, grumbling under his breath at Mukoki's folly. And then: "The dogs have always acted queerly when Tavish was near," he added in a lower voice. "I can't explain why; they simply do. Instinct, possibly. His presence makes them uneasy. An unusual man, this Tavish. I wish he would come. I am anxious for you to meet him."
That his mind was quite easy on the score of Tavish's physical well-being he emphasized by falling asleep very shortly after rolling himself up in his blankets on the floor. During their three nights in camp David had marvelled at and envied the ease with which Father Roland could drop off into profound and satisfactory slumber, this being, as his new friend had explained to him, the great and underlying virtue of a good stomach. To-night, however, the Missioner's deep and regular breathing as he lay on the floor was a matter of vexation to him. He wanted him awake. He wanted him up and alive, thoroughly alive, when Tavish came. "Pounding his ear like a tenderfoot," he thought, "while I, a puppy in harness, couldn't sleep if I wanted to." He was nervously alert. He filled his pipe for the third or fourth time and sat down on the edge of the bunk, listening for Tavish. He was certain, from all that had been said, that Tavish would come. All he had to do was wait. There had been growing in him, a bit unconsciously at first, a feeling of animosity toward Tavish, an emotion that burned in him with a gathering fierceness as he sat alone in the dim light of the cabin, grinding out in his mental restlessness visions of what Tavish might have done. Conviction had never been stronger in him. Tavish, if he had guessed correctly, was a fiend. He would soon know. And if he was right, if Tavish had done that, if up in those mountains....
His eyes blazed and his hands were clenched as he looked down at Father Roland. After a moment, without taking his eyes from the Missioner's recumbent form, he reached to the pocket of his coat which he had flung on the bunk and drew out the picture of the Girl. He looked at it a long time, his heart growing warm, and the tense lines softening in his face.
"It can't be," he whispered. "She is alive!"
As if the wind had heard him, and was answering, there came more distinctly the sound close behind him.
_Thud! Thud! Thud!_
There was a silence, in which David closed his fingers tightly about the picture. And then, more insistently:
_Thud! Thud! Thud!_
He put the picture back into his pocket, and rose to his feet. Mechanically he slipped on his coat. He went to the door, opened it softly, and passed out into the night. The moon was above him, like a great, white disc. The sky burned with stars. He could see now to the foot of the ridge over which Mukoki had gone, and the clearing about the cabin lay in a cold and luminous glory. Tavish, if he had been caught in the twilight darkness and had waited for the moon to rise, would be showing up soon.
He walked to the side of the cabin and looked back. Quite distinctly he could see Tavish's meat, suspended from a stout sapling that projected straight out from under the edge of the roof. It hung there darkly, a little in shadow, swinging gently in the wind that had risen, and tap-tap-tapping against the logs. David moved toward it, gazing at the edge of the forest in which he thought he had heard a sound that was like the creak of a sledge runner. He hoped it was Tavish returning. For several moments he listened with his back to the cabin. Then he turned. He was very close to the thing hanging from the sapling. It was swinging slightly. The moon shone on it, and then--Great God! A face--a human face! A face, bearded, with bulging, staring eyes, gaping mouth--a grin of agony frozen in it! And it was tapping, tapping, tapping!
He staggered back with a dreadful cry. He swayed to the door, groped blindly for the latch, stumbled in clumsily, like a drunken man. The horror of that lifeless, grinning face was in his voice. He had awakened the Missioner, who was sitting up, staring at him.
"Tavish ..." cried David chokingly; "Tavish--is dead!" and he pointed to the end of the cabin where they could hear again that _tap-tap-tapping_ against the log wall.


CHAPTER XII
Not until afterward did David realize how terribly his announcement of Tavish's death must have struck into the soul of Father Roland. For a few seconds the Missioner did not move. He was wide awake, he had heard, and yet he looked at David dumbly, his two hands gripping his blanket. When he did move, it was to turn his face slowly toward the end of the cabin where the thing was hanging, with only the wall between. Then, still slowly, he rose to his feet.
David thought he had only half understood.
"Tavish--is dead!" he repeated huskily, straining to swallow the thickening in his throat. "He is out there--hanging by his neck--dead!"
_Dead!_ He emphasized that word--spoke it twice.
Father Roland still did not answer. He was getting into his clothes mechanically, his face curiously ashen, his eyes neither horrified nor startled, but with a stunned look in them. He did not speak when he went to the door and out into the night. David followed, and in a moment they stood close to the thing that was hanging where Tavish's meat should have been. The moon threw a vivid sort of spotlight on it. It was grotesque and horrible--very bad to look at, and unforgettable. Tavish had not died easily. He seemed to shriek that fact at them as he swung there dead; even now he seemed more terrified than cold. His teeth gleamed a little. That, perhaps, was the worst of it all. And his hands were clenched tight. David noticed that. Nothing seemed relaxed about him.
Not until he had looked at Tavish for perhaps sixty full seconds did Father Roland speak. He had recovered himself, judging from his voice. It was quiet and unexcited. But in his first words, unemotional as they were, there was a significance that was almost frightening.
"At last! She made him do that!"
He was speaking to himself, looking straight into Tavish's agonized face. A great shudder swept through David. _She!_ He wanted to cry out. He wanted to know. But