The Danger Trail - James Oliver Curwood (ebook e reader TXT) 📗

the top of the stairs all had disappeared but Jean and the bearded man. Dawn was breaking, and a pale light fell through the two windows of the room they had entered. On a table burned a lamp, and near the table were several chairs. To one of these Croisset motioned the engineer, and as Howland sat down the bearded man turned slowly and passed through a door. Jean shrugged his shoulders as the other disappeared.
"_Mon Dieu_, that means that he leaves it all to me," he exclaimed. "I don't wonder that it is hard for him to talk, M'seur. Perhaps you have begun to understand!"
"Yes, a little," replied Howland. His heart was throbbing as if he had just finished climbing a long hill. "That was the man who tried to kill me. But Meleese--the--" He could go no further. Scarce breathing, he waited for Jean to speak.
"It is Pierre Thoreau," he said, "eldest brother to Meleese. It is he who should say what I am about to tell you, M'seur. But he is too full of grief to speak. You wonder at that? And yet I tell you that a man with a better soul than Pierre Thoreau never lived, though three times he has tried to kill you. Do you remember what you asked me a short time ago, M'seur--if I thought that _you_ were the John Howland who murdered the father of Meleese sixteen years ago? God's saints, and I did until hardly more than half an hour ago, when some one came from the South and exploded a mine under our feet. It was the youngest of the three brothers. M'seur we have made a great mistake, and we ask your forgiveness."
In the silence the eyes of the two men met across the table. To Howland it was not the thought that his life was saved that came with the greatest force, but the thought of Meleese, the knowledge that in that hour when all seemed to be lost she was nearer to him than ever. He leaned half over the table, his hands clenched, his eyes blazing. Jean did not understand, for he went on quickly.
"I know it is hard, M'seur. Perhaps it will be impossible for you to forgive a thing like this. We have tried to kill you--kill you by a slow torture, as we thought you deserved. But think for a moment, M'seur, of what happened up here sixteen years ago this winter. I have told you how I choked life from the man-fiend. So I would have choked life from you if it had not been for Meleese. I, too, am guilty. Only six years ago we knew that the right John Howland--the son of the man I slew--was in Montreal, and we sent to seek him this youngest brother, for he had been a long time at school with Meleese and knew the ways of the South better than the others. But he failed to find him at that time, and it was only a short while ago that this brother located you.
"As Our Blessed Lady is my witness, M'seur, it is not strange that he should have taken you for the man we sought, for it is singular that you bear him out like a brother in looks, as I remember the boy. It is true that Francois made a great error when he sent word to his brothers suggesting that if either Gregson or Thorne was put out of the way you would probably be sent into the North. I swear by the Virgin that Meleese knew nothing of this, M'seur. She knew nothing of the schemes by which her brothers drove Gregson and Thorne back into the South. They did not wish to kill them, and yet it was necessary to do something that you might replace one of them, M'seur. They did not make a move alone but that something happened. Gregson lost a finger. Thorne was badly hurt--as you know. Bullets came through their window at night. With Jackpine in their employ it was easy to work on them, and it was not long before they sent down asking for another man to replace them."
For the first time a surge of anger swept through Howland.
"The cowards!" he exclaimed. "A pretty pair, Croisset--to crawl out from under a trap to let another in at the top!"
"Perhaps not so bad as that," said Jean. "They were given to understand that they--and they alone--were not wanted in the country. It may be that they did not think harm would come to you, and so kept quiet about what had happened. It may be, too, that they did not like to have it known that they were running away from danger. Is not that human, M'seur? Anyway, you were detailed to come, and not until then did Meleese know of all that had occurred."
The Frenchman stopped for a moment. The glare had faded from Howland's eyes. The tense lines in his face relaxed.
"I--I--believe I understand everything now, Jean," he said. "You traced the wrong John Howland, that's all. I love Meleese, Jean. I would kill John Howland for her. I want to meet her brothers and shake their hands. I don't blame them. They're men. But, somehow, it hurts to think of her--of Meleese--as--as almost a murderer."
"_Mon Dieu_, M'seur, has she not saved your life! Listen to this! It was then--when she knew what had happened--that Meleese came to me--whom she had made the happiest man in the world because it was she who brought my Mariane over from Churchill on a visit especially that I might see her and fall in love with her, M'seur--which I did. Meleese came to me--to Jean Croisset--and instead of planning your murder, M'seur, she schemed to save your life--with me--who would have cut you into bits no larger than my finger and fed you to the carrion ravens, who would have choked the life out of you until your eyes bulged in death, as I choked that one up on the Great Slave! Do you understand, M'seur? It was Meleese who came and pleaded with me to save your life--before you had left Chicago, before she had heard more of you than your name, before--"
Croisset hesitated, and stopped.
"Before what, Jean?"
"Before she had learned to love you, M'seur."
"God bless her!" exclaimed Howland.
"You believe this, M'seur?"
"As I believe in a God."
"Then I will tell you what she did, M'seur," he continued in a low voice. "The plan of the brothers was to make you a prisoner near Prince Albert and bring you north. I knew what was to happen then. It was to be a beautiful vengeance, M'seur--a slow torturing death on the spot where the crime was committed sixteen years ago. But Meleese knew nothing of this. She was made to believe that up here, where the mother and father died, you would be given over to the proper law--to the mounted police who come this way now and then. She is only a girl, M'seur, easily made to believe strange things in such matters as these, else she would have wondered why you were not given to the officers in Prince Albert. It was the eldest brother who thought of her as a lure to bring you out of the town into their hands, and not until the last moment, when they were ready to leave for the South, did she overhear words that aroused her suspicions that they were about to kill you. It was then, M'seur, that she came to me."
"And you, Jean?"
"On the day that Mariane promised to become my wife, M'seur, I promised in Our Blessed Lady's name to repay my debt to Meleese, and the manner of payment came in this fashion. Jackpine, too, was her slave, and so we worked together. Two hours after Meleese and her brothers had left for the South I was following them, shaven of beard and so changed that I was not recognized in the fight on the Great North Trail. Meleese thought that her brothers would make you a prisoner that night without harming you. Her brothers told her how to bring you to their camp. She knew nothing of the ambush until they leaped on you from cover. Not until after the fight, when in their rage at your escape the brothers told her that they had intended to kill you, did she realize fully what she had done. That is all, M'seur. You know what happened after that. She dared not tell you at Wekusko who your enemies were, for those enemies were of her own flesh and blood, and dearer to her than life. She was between two great loves, M'seur--the love for her brothers and--"
Again Jean hesitated.
"And her love for me," finished Howland.
"Yes, her love for you, M'seur."
The two men rose from the table, and for a moment stood with clasped hands in the smoky light of lamp and dawn. In that moment neither heard a tap at the door leading to the room beyond, nor saw the door move gently inward, and Meleese, hesitating, framed in the opening.
It was Howland who spoke first.
"I thank God that all these things have happened, Jean," he said earnestly. "I am glad that for a time you took me for that other John Howland, and that Pierre Thoreau and his brothers schemed to kill me at Prince Albert and Wekusko, for if these things had not occurred as they have I would never have seen Meleese. And now, Jean--"
His ears caught sound of movement, and he turned in time to see Meleese slipping quietly out.
"Meleese!" he called softly. "Meleese!"
In an instant he had darted after her, leaving Jean beside the table. Beyond the door there was only the breaking gloom of the gray mornings but it was enough for him to see faintly the figure of the girl he loved, half turned, half waiting for him. With a cry of joy he sprang forward and gathered her close in his arms.
"Meleese--my Meleese--" he whispered.
After that there came no sound from the dawn-lit room beyond, but Jean Croisset, still standing by the table, murmured softly to himself: "Our Blessed Lady be praised, for it is all as Jean Croisset would have it--and now I can go to my Mariane!"
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Publication Date: 12-08-2009

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