The River's End, James Oliver Curwood [read people like a book TXT] 📗

hands trembled. He saw her try to hide them, and pitied her.
"Then I won't trouble you any more, for that, too, is impossible," she said. "May I trust you to keep in confidence what I have told you? Perhaps I have had too much faith in you for a reason which has no reason, because you were with John Keith. John Keith was the one other man who might have helped me."
"And why John Keith? How could he have helped you?"
She shook her head. "If I told you that, I should be answering the question which is impossible."
He saw himself facing a checkmate. To plead, to argue with her, he knew would profit him nothing. A new thought came to him, swift and imperative. The end would justify the means. He clenched his hands. He forced into his face a look that was black and vengeful. And he turned it on her.
"Listen to me," he cried. "You are playing a game, and so am I. Possibly we are selfish, both of us, looking each to his own interests with no thought of the other. Will you help me, if I help you?"
Again he pitied her as he saw with what eager swiftness she caught at his bait.
"Yes," she nodded, catching her breath. "Yes, I will help you."
His face grew blacker. He raised his clenched hands so she could see them, and advanced a step toward her.
"Then tell me this--would you care if something happened to Shan Tung? Would you care if he died, if he was killed, if--"
Her breath was coming faster and faster. Again the red spots blazed in her cheeks.
"WOULD YOU CARE?" he demanded.
"No--no--I wouldn't care. He deserves to die."
"Then tell me where Shan Tung is. For my game is with him. And I believe it is a bigger game than your game, for it is a game of life and death. That is why I am interested in your affair. It is because I am selfish, because I have my own score to settle, and because you can help me. I shall ask you no more questions about yourself. And I shall keep your secret and help you with McDowell if you will keep mine and help me. First, where is Shan Tung?"
She hesitated for barely an instant. "He has gone out of town. He will be away for ten days."
"But he bought no ticket; no one saw him leave by train."
"No, he walked up the river. An auto was waiting for him. He will pass through tonight on the eastbound train on his way to Winnipeg."
"Will you tell me why he is going to Winnipeg?"
"No, I cannot."
He shrugged his shoulders. "It is scarcely necessary to ask. I can guess. It is to see your brother."
Again he knew he had struck home.
And yet she said, "No, it is not to see my brother."
He held out his hand to her. "Miss Kirkstone, I am going to keep my promise. I am going to help you with McDowell. Of course I demand my price. Will you swear on your word of honor to let me know the moment Shan Tung returns?"
"I will let you know."
Their hands clasped. Looking into her eyes, Keith saw what told him his was not the greatest cross to bear. Miriam Kirkstone also was fighting for her life, and as he turned to leave her, he said:
"While there is life there is hope. In settling my score with Shan Tung I believe that I shall also settle yours. It is a strong hunch, Miss Kirkstone, and it's holding me tight. Ten days, Shan Tung, and then--"
He left her, smiling. Miriam Kirkstone watched him go, her slim hands clutched at her breast, her eyes aglow with a new thought, a new hope; and as he heard the gate slam behind him, a sobbing cry rose in her throat, and she reached out her hands as if to call him back, for something was telling her that through this man lay the way to her salvation.
And her lips were moaning softly, "Ten days--ten days--and then--what?"


XIX
In those ten days all the wonders of June came up out of the south. Life pulsed with a new and vibrant force. The crimson fire-flowers, first of wild blooms to come after snow and frost, splashed the green spaces with red. The forests took on new colors, the blue of the sky grew nearer, and in men's veins the blood ran with new vigor and anticipations. To Keith they were all this and more. Four years along the rim of the Arctic had made it possible for him to drink to the full the glory of early summer along the Saskatchewan. And to Mary Josephine it was all new. Never had she seen a summer like this that was dawning, that most wonderful of all the summers in the world, which comes in June along the southern edge of the Northland.
Keith had played his promised part. It was not difficult for him to wipe away the worst of McDowell's suspicions regarding Miss Kirkstone, for McDowell was eager to believe. When Keith told him that Miriam was on the verge of a nervous breakdown simply because of certain trouble into which Shan Tung had inveigled her brother, and that everything would be straightened out the moment Shan Tung returned from Winnipeg, the iron man seized his hands in a sudden burst of relief and gratitude.
"But why didn't she confide in me, Conniston?" he complained. "Why didn't she confide in me?" The anxiety in his voice, its note of disappointment, were almost boyish.
Keith was prepared. "Because--"
He hesitated, as if projecting the thing in his mind. "McDowell, I'm in a delicate position. You must understand without forcing me to say too much. You are the last man in the world Miss Kirkstone wants to know about her trouble until she has triumphed, and it is over. Delicacy, perhaps; a woman's desire to keep something she is ashamed of from the one man she looks up to above all other men--to keep it away from him until she has cleared herself so that there is no suspicion. McDowell, if I were you, I'd be proud of her for that."
McDowell turned away, and for a space Keith saw the muscles in the back of his neck twitching.
"Derwent, maybe you've guessed, maybe you understand," he said after a moment with his face still turned to the window. "Of course she will never know. I'm too Old, old enough to be her father. But I've got the right to watch over her, and if any man ever injures her--"
His fists grew knotted, and softly Keith said behind him:
"You'd possibly do what John Keith did to the man who wronged his father. And because the Law is not always omniscient, it is also possible that Shan Tung may have to answer in some such way. Until then, until she comes to you of her own free will and with gladness in her eyes tells you her own secret and why she kept it from you--until she does that, I say, it is your part to treat her as if you had seen nothing, guessed nothing, suspected nothing. Do that, McDowell, and leave the rest to me."
He went out, leaving the iron man still with his face to the window.
With Mary Josephine there was no subterfuge. His mind was still centered in his own happiness. He could not wipe out of his brain the conviction that if he waited for Shan Tung he was waiting just so long under the sword of Damocles, with a hair between him and doom. He hoped that Miriam Kirkstone's refusal to confide in him and her reluctance to furnish him with the smallest facts in the matter would turn Mary Josephine's sympathy into a feeling of indifference if not of actual resentment. He was disappointed. Mary Josephine insisted on having Miss Kirkstone over for dinner the next day, and from that hour something grew between the two girls which Keith knew he was powerless to overcome. Thereafter he bowed his head to fate. He must wait for Shan Tung.
"If it wasn't for your promise not to fall in love, I'd be afraid," Mary Josephine confided to him that night, perched on the arm of his big chair. "At times I was afraid today, Derry. She's lovely. And you like pretty hair--and hers--is wonderful!"
"I don't remember," said Keith quietly, "that I promised you I wouldn't fall in love. I'm desperately in love, and with you, Mary Josephine. And as for Miss Kirkstone's lovely hair--I wouldn't trade one of yours for all she has on her head."
At that, with a riotous little laugh of joy, Mary Josephine swiftly unbound her hair and let it smother about his face and shoulders. "Sometimes I have a terribly funny thought, Derry," she whispered. "If we hadn't always been sweethearts, back there at home, and if you hadn't always liked my hair, and kissed me, and told me I was pretty, I'd almost think you weren't my brother!"
Keith laughed and was glad that her hair covered his face. During those wonderful first days of the summer they were inseparable, except when matters of business took Keith away. During these times he prepared for eventualities. The Keith properties in Prince Albert, he estimated, were worth at least a hundred thousand dollars, and he learned from McDowell that they would soon go through a process of law before being turned over to his fortunate inheritors. Before that time, however, he knew that his own fate would be sealed one way or the other, and now that he had Mary Josephine to look after, he made a will, leaving everything to her, and signing himself John Keith. This will he carried in an envelope pinned inside his shirt. As Derwent Conniston he collected one thousand two hundred and sixty dollars for three and a half years back wage in the Service. Two hundred and sixty of this he kept in his own pocket. The remaining thousand he counted out in new hundred-dollar bills under Mary Josephine's eyes, sealed the bills in another envelope, and gave the envelope to her.
"It's safer with you than with me," he excused himself. "Fasten it inside your dress. It's our grub-stake into the mountains."
Mary Josephine accepted the treasure with the repressed delight of one upon whose fair shoulders had been placed a tremendous responsibility.
There were days of both joy and pain for Keith. For even in the fullest hours of his happiness there was a thing eating at his heart, a thing that was eating deeper and deeper until at times it was like a destroying flame within him. One night he dreamed; he dreamed that Conniston came to his bedside and wakened him, and that after wakening him he taunted him in ghoulish glee and told him that in bequeathing him a sister he had given unto him forever and forever the curse of the daughters of Achelous. And Keith, waking in the dark hour of night, knew in his despair that it was so. For all time, even though he won this fight he was fighting, Mary Josephine would be the unattainable. A sister--and he loved her with the love of a man!
It was the next day after the dream that they wandered again into the grove that sheltered Keith's old home, and again they entered it and went through the cold and empty rooms. In one of these rooms he sought among the titles of dusty rows of books until he came to one and opened it. And there he found what had been in the corner of his mind when the sun rose to give him