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

wall and returned with a quart flask that resembled an army canteen, and two tin cups. He sat down at a small table, his bloated, red face in the light of the lamp, that queer animal-like rumbling in his throat, as he turned out the liquor. David had heard porcupines make something like the same sound. He pulled his hat lower over his eyes to hide the gleam of them as Brokaw told him what he and Hauck had planned. The bear in the cage belonged to him--Brokaw. A big brute. Fierce. A fighter. Hauck and he were going to bet on his bear because it would surely kill Tara. Make a big clean-up, they would. Tara was soft. Too easy living. And they needed money because those scoundrels over on the coast had failed to get in enough whisky for their trade. The girl had almost spoiled their plans by going away with Tara. And he--Mac--was a devil of a good fellow for bringing her back! They'd pull off the fight to-morrow. If the girl--that little bird-devil that belonged to him--didn't like it....
He brought the canteen down with a bang, and shoved one of the cups across to David.
"Of course, she belongs to you," said David, encouragingly, "but--confound you--I can't believe it, you old dog! I can't believe it!" He leaned over and gave Brokaw a jocular slap, forcing a laugh out of himself. "She's too pretty for you. Prettiest kid I ever saw! How did it happen? Eh? You--_lucky_--dog!"
He was fairly trembling as he saw the red fire of satisfaction, of gloating pleasure, deepen in Brokaw's face.
"She hasn't belonged to you very long, eh?"
"Long time, long time," replied Brokaw, pausing with his cup half way to his mouth. "Years ago."
Suddenly he lowered the cup so forcefully that half the liquor in it was spilled over the table. He thrust his huge shoulders and red face toward David, and in an instant there was a snarl on his thick lips.
"Hauck said she didn't," he growled. "What do you think of that, Mac?--said she didn't belong to me any more, an' I'd have to pay for her keep! Gawd, I did. I gave him a lot of gold!"
"You were a fool," said David, trying to choke back his eagerness. "A fool!"
"I should have killed him, shouldn't I, Mac--killed him an' _took_ her?" cried Brokaw huskily, his passion rising as he knotted his huge fists on the table. "Killed him like you killed the Breed for that long-haired she-devil over at Copper Cliff!"
"I--don't--know," said David, slowly, praying that he might not say the wrong thing now. "I don't know what claim you had on her, Brokaw. If I knew...."
He waited. Brokaw did not seem altogether like a drunken man now, and for a moment he feared that discovery had come. He leaned over the table. The watery film seemed to drop from his eyes for an instant and his teeth gleamed wolfishly. David was glad the lamp chimney was black with soot, and that the rim of his hat shadowed his face, for it seemed to him that Brokaw's vision had grown suddenly better.
"I should have killed him, an' took her," repeated Brokaw, his voice heavy with passion. "I should have had her long ago, but Hauck's woman kept her from me. She's been mine all along, ever since...." His mind seemed to lag. He drew his hulking shoulders back slowly. "But I'll have her to-morrow," he mumbled, as if he had suddenly forgotten David and was talking to himself. "To-morrow. Next day we'll start north. Hauck can't say anything now. I've paid him. She's mine--mine now--to-night! By...."
David shuddered at what he saw in the brute's revolting face. It was the dawning of a sudden, terrible idea. To-night! It blazed there in his eyes, grown watery again. Quickly David turned out more liquor, and thrust one of the cups into Brokaw's hand. The giant drank. His body sank into piggish laxness. For a moment the danger was past. David knew that time was precious. He must force his hand.
"And if Hauck troubles you," he cried, striking the table a blow with his fist, "I'll help you settle for him, Brokaw! I'll do it for old time's sake. I'll do to him what I did to the Breed. The girl's yours. She's belonged to you for a long time, eh? Tell me about it, Brokaw--tell me before Hauck comes!"
Could he never make that bloated fiend tell him what he wanted to know? Brokaw stared at him stupidly, and then all at once he started, as if some one had pricked him into consciousness, and a slow grin began to spread over his face. It was a reminiscent, horrible sort of leer, not a smile--the expression of a man who gloats over a revolting and unspeakable thing.
"She's mine--been mine ever since she was a baby," he confided, leaning again over the table. "Good friend, give her to me, Mac--good friend but a dam' fool," he chuckled. He rubbed his huge hands together and turned out more liquor. "Dam' fool!" he repeated. "Any man's a dam' fool to turn down a pretty woman, eh, Mac? An' she was pretty, he says. _My_ girl's mother, you know. She must have been pretty. It was off there--in the bush country--years ago. The kid you brought in to-day was a baby then--alone with her mother. Ho, ho! deuced easy--deuced easy! But he was a darn' fool!"
He drank with incredible slowness, it seemed to David. It was torture to watch him, with the fear, every instant, that Hauck would come.
"What happened?" he urged.
"Bucky--my friend--in love with that woman, O'Doone's wife," resumed Brokaw. "Dead crazy, Mac. Crazier'n you were over the Breed's woman, only he didn't have the nerve. Just moped around--waiting--keeping out of O'Doone's way. Trapper, O'Doone was--or a Company runner. Forgot which. Anyway he went on a long trip, in winter, and got laid up with a broken leg long way from home. Wife and baby alone, an' Bucky sneaked up one day and found the woman sick with fever. Out of her head! Dead out, Bucky says--an' my Gawd! If she didn't think he was her husband come back! That easy, Mac--an' he lacked the nerve! Crazy in love with her, he was, an' didn't dare play the part. Told me it was conscience. Bah! it wasn't. He was afraid. Scared. A fool. Then he said the fever must have touched him. Ho, ho! it was funny. He was a scared fool. Wish _I'd_ been there, Mac; wish _I_ had!"
His eyes half closed, gleaming in narrow, shining slits. His chin dropped on his chest. David prodded him on.
"Bucky got her to run away with him," continued Brokaw. "Her and the kid, while she was still out of her head. Bucky even got her to write a note, he said, telling O'Doone she was sick of him an' was running away with another man. Bucky didn't give his own name, of course. An' the woman didn't know what she was doing. They started west with the kid, and all the time Bucky was _afraid_! He dragged the woman on a sledge, and snow covered their trail. He hid in a cabin a hundred miles from O'Doone's, an' it was there the woman come to her senses. Gawd! it must have been exciting! Bucky says she was like a mad woman, and that she ran screeching out into the night, leaving the kid with him. He followed but he couldn't find her. He waited, but she never came back. A snow storm covered her trail. Then Bucky says _he_ went mad--the fool! He waited till spring, keeping that kid, and then he made up his mind to get it back to Papa O'Doone in some way. He sneaked back where the cabin had been, and found nothing but char there. It had been burned. Oh, the devil, but it was funny! And after all this trouble he hadn't dared to take O'Doone's place with the woman. Conscience? Bah! He was a fool. You don't get a pretty woman like that very often, eh, Mac?" Unsteadily he tilted the flask to turn himself out another drink. His voice was thickening. David rejoiced when he saw that the flask was empty.
"Dam'!" said Brokaw, shaking it.
"Go on," insisted David. "You haven't told me how you came by the girl, Brokaw?"
The watery film was growing thicker over Brokaw's eyes. He brought himself back to his story with an apparent effort.
"Came west, Bucky did--with the kid," he went on. "Struck my cabin, on the Mackenzie, a year later. Told me all about it. Then one day he sneaked away and left her with me, begging me to put her where she'd be safe. I did. Gave her to Hauck's woman, and told her Bucky's story. Later, Hauck came over here and built this place. Three years ago I come down from the Yukon, and saw the kid. Pretty? Gawd, she was! Almost a woman. And she was _mine_. I told 'em so. Mebby the woman would have cheated me, but I had Hauck on the hip because I saw him kill a man when he was drunk--a white man from Fort MacPherson. Helped him hide the body. And then--oh, it was funny!--I ran across Bucky! He was living in a shack a dozen miles from here, an' he didn't know Marge was the O'Doone baby. I told him a big lie--told him the kid died, an' that I'd heard the woman had killed herself, and that O'Doone was in a lunatic asylum. Mebby he did have a conscience, the fool! Guess he was a little crazy himself. Went away soon after that. Never heard of him since. An' I've been hanging round until the girl was old enough to live with a man. Ain't I done right, Mac? Don't she belong to me? An' to-morrow...."
His head rolled. He recovered himself with an effort, and leaned heavily against the table. His face was almost barren of human expression. It was the face of a monster, unlighted by reason, stripped of mind and soul. And David, glaring into it across the table, questioned him once more, even as he heard the crunch of footsteps outside, and knew that Hauck was coming--coming in all probability to unmask him in the part he had played. But Hauck was too late. He was ready to fight now, and as he held himself prepared for the struggle he asked that question.
"And this man--Bucky; what was his other name, Brokaw?"
Brokaw's thick lips moved, and then came his voice, in a husky whisper:
"Tavish!"


CHAPTER XXII
The next instant Hauck was at the open door. He did not cross the threshold at once, but stood there for perhaps twenty seconds--his gray, hard face looking in on them with eyes in which there was a cold and sinister glitter. Brokaw, with the fumes of liquor thick in his brain, tried to nod an invitation for him to enter; his head rolled grotesquely and his voice was a croak. David rose slowly to his feet, thrusting back his chair. From contemplating Brokaw's sagging body, Hauck's eyes were levelled at him. And then his lips parted. One would not have called it a smile. It revealed to David a deadly animosity which the man was trying to hide under the disguise of that grin, and he knew that Hauck had discovered that he was not McKenna. Swiftly David shot a glance at Brokaw. The giant's head and shoulders lay on the table, and he made a sudden daring effort to save a little more time for himself.
"I'm sorry," he said. "He's terribly drunk."
Hauck nodded his head--he kept nodding it, that cold glitter in his eyes, the steady, insinuating grin still there.
"Yes,