The Indian Drum - William MacHarg (fastest ebook reader txt) 📗

few days had brought him very quickly back to her. Moved by some intuitive certainty regarding Spearman, she had come north; she had not thought of peril to herself; she had struggled alone across dangerous ice in storm—a girl brought up as she had been! She had found him—Alan—with life almost extinct upon the beach; she and the Indian woman, Wassaquam had just said, had brought him along the shore. How had they managed that, he wondered; they had somehow got him to this house which, in his ignorance of exactly where he was upon the mainland, he had thought must be Wassaquam's; she had gone to get help— His throat closed up, and his eyes filled as he thought of this.

In the week during which he had been cared for here, Alan had not seen Constance; but there had been a peculiar and exciting alteration in Sherrill's manner toward him, he had felt; it was something more than merely liking for him that Sherrill had showed, and Sherrill had spoken of her to him as Constance, not, as he had called her always before, "Miss Sherrill" or "my daughter." Alan had had dreams which had seemed impossible of fulfilment, of dedicating his life and all that he could make of it to her; now Sherrill's manner had brought to him something like awe, as of something quite incredible.

When he had believed that disgrace was his—disgrace because he was Benjamin Corvet's son—he had hidden, or tried to hide, his feeling toward her; he knew now that he was not Corvet's son; Spearman had shot his father, Corvet had said. But he could not be certain yet who his father was or what revelation regarding himself might now be given. Could he dare to betray that he was thinking of Constance as—as he could not keep from thinking? He dared not without daring to dream that Sherrill's manner meant that she could care for him; and that he could not presume. What she had undergone for him—her venture alone up the beach and that dreadful contest which had taken place between her and Spearman—must remain circumstances which he had learned but from which he could not yet take conclusions.

He turned to the Indian.

"Has anything more been heard of Spearman, Judah?"

"Only this, Alan; he crossed the Straits the next day upon the ferry there. In Mackinaw City he bought liquor at a bar and took it with him; he asked there about trains into the northwest. He has gone, leaving all he had. What else could he do?"

Alan crossed the little cabin and looked out the window over the snow-covered slope, where the bright sun was shining. It was very still without; there was no motion at all in the pines toward the ice-bound shore; and the shadow of the wood smoke rising from the cabin chimney made almost a straight line across the snow. Snow had covered any tracks that there had been upon the beach where those who had been in the boat with him had been found dead. He had known that this must be; he had believed them beyond aid when he had tried for the shore to summon help for them and for himself. The other boat, which had carried survivors of the wreck, blown farther to the south, had been able to gain the shore of North Fox Island; and as these men had not been so long exposed before they were brought to shelter, four men lived. Sherrill had told him their names; they were the mate, the assistant engineer, a deckhand and Father Perron, the priest who had been a passenger but who had stayed with the crew till the last. Benjamin Corvet had perished in the wreckage of the cars.

As Alan went back to his chair, the Indian watched him and seemed not displeased.

"You feel good now, Alan?" Wassaquam asked.

"Almost like myself, Judah."

"That is right then. It was thought you would be like that to-day." He looked at the long shadows and at the height of the early morning sun, estimating the time of day. "A sled is coming soon now."

"We're going to leave here, Judah?"

"Yes, Alan."

Was he going to see her then? Excitement stirred him, and he turned to Wassaquam to ask that; but suddenly he hesitated and did not inquire.

Wassaquam brought the mackinaw and cap which Alan had worn on Number 25; he took from the bed the new blankets which had been furnished by Sherrill. They waited until a farmer appeared driving a team hitched to a low, wide-runnered sled. The Indian settled Alan on the sled, and they drove off.

The farmer looked frequently at Alan with curious interest; the sun shone down, dazzling, and felt almost warm in the still air. Wassaquam, with regard for the frostbite from which Alan had been suffering, bundled up the blankets around him; but Alan put them down reassuringly. They traveled south along the shore, rounded into Little Traverse Bay, and the houses of Harbor Point appeared among their pines. Alan could see plainly that these were snow-weighted and boarded up without sign of occupation; but he saw that the Sherrill house was open; smoke rose from the chimney, and the windows winked with the reflection of a red blaze within. He was so sure that this was their destination that he started to throw off the robes.

"Nobody there now," Wassaquam indicated the house. "At Petoskey; we go on there."

The sled proceeded across the edge of the bay to the little city; even before leaving the bay ice, Alan saw Constance and her father; they were walking at the water front near to the railway station, and they came out on the ice as they recognized the occupants of the sled.

Alan felt himself alternately weak and roused to strength as he saw her. The sled halted and, as she approached, he stepped down. Their eyes encountered, and hers looked away; a sudden shyness, which sent his heart leaping, had come over her. He wanted to speak to her, to make some recognition to her of what she had done, but he did not dare to trust his voice; and she seemed to understand that. He turned to Sherrill instead. An engine and tender coupled to a single car stood at the railway station.

"We're going to Chicago?" he inquired of Sherrill.

"Not yet, Alan—to St. Ignace. Father Perron—the priest, you know—went to St. Ignace as soon as he recovered from his exposure. He sent word to me that he wished to see me at my convenience; I told him that we would go to him as soon as you were able."

"He sent no other word than that?"

"Only that he had a very grave communication to make to us."

Alan did not ask more; at mention of Father Perron he had seemed to feel himself once more among the crashing, charging freight cars on the ferry and to see Benjamin Corvet, pinned amid the wreckage and speaking into the ear of the priest.

Father Perron, walking up and down upon the docks close to the railway station at St. Ignace, where the tracks end without bumper or blocking of any kind above the waters of the lake, was watching south directly across the Straits. It was mid-afternoon and the ice-crusher Ste. Marie, which had been expected at St. Ignace about this time, was still some four miles out. During the storm of the week before, the floes had jammed into that narrow neck between the great lakes of Michigan and Huron until, men said, the Straits were ice-filled to the bottom; but the Ste. Marie and the St. Ignace had plied steadily back and forth.

Through a stretch where the ice-crusher now was the floes had changed position, or new ice was blocking the channel; for the Ste. Marie, having stopped, was backing; now her funnels shot forth fresh smoke, and she charged ahead. The priest clenched his hands as the steamer met the shock and her third propeller—the one beneath her bow—sucked the water out from under the floe and left it without support; she met the ice barrier, crashed some of it aside; she broke through, recoiled, halted, charged, climbed up the ice and broke through again. As she drew nearer now in her approach, the priest walked back toward the railway station.

It was not merely a confessional which Father Perron had taken from the lips of the dying man on Number 25; it was an accusation of crime against another man as well; and the confession and accusation both had been made, not only to gain forgiveness from God, but to right terrible wrongs. If the confession left some things unexplained, it did not lack confirmation; the priest had learned enough to be certain that it was no hallucination of madness. He had been charged definitely to repeat what had been told him to the persons he was now going to meet; so he watched expectantly as the Ste. Marie made its landing. A train of freight cars was upon the ferry, but a single passenger coach was among them, and the switching engine brought this off first. A tall, handsome man whom Father Perron thought must be the Mr. Sherrill with whom he had communicated appeared upon the car platform; the young man from Number 25 followed him, and the two helped down a young and beautiful girl.

They recognized the priest by his dress and came toward him at once.

"Mr. Sherrill?" Father Perron inquired.

Sherrill assented, taking the priest's hand and introducing his daughter.

"I am glad to see you safe, Mr. Stafford." The priest had turned to Alan. "We have thanks to offer up for that, you and I!"

"I am his son, then! I thought that must be so."

Alan trembled at the priest's sign of confirmation. There was no shock of surprise in this; he had suspected ever since August, when Captain Stafford's watch and the wedding ring had so strangely come to Constance, that he might be Stafford's son. His inquiries had brought him, at that time, to St. Ignace, as Father Perron's had brought him now; but he had not been able to establish proof of any connection between himself and the baby son of Captain Stafford who had been born in that town.

He looked at Constance, as they followed the priest to the motor which was waiting to take them to the house of old Father Benitot, whose guest Father Perron was; she was very quiet. What would that grave statement which Father Perron was to make to them mean to him—to Alan? Would further knowledge about that father whom he had not known, but whose blood was his and whose name he now must bear, bring pride or shame to him?

A bell was tolling somewhere, as they followed the priest into Father Benitot's small, bare room which had been prepared for their interview. Father Perron went to a desk and took therefrom some notes which he had made. He did not seem, as he looked through these notes, to be refreshing his memory; rather he seemed to be seeking something which the notes did not supply; for he put them back and reclosed the desk.

"What I have," he said, speaking more particularly to Sherrill, "is the terrible, not fully coherent statement of a dying man. It has given me names—also it has given me facts. But isolated. It does not give what came before or what came after; therefore, it does not make plain. I hope that, as Benjamin Corvet's partner, you can furnish what I lack."

"What is it you want to know?" Sherrill asked.

"What were the relations between Benjamin Corvet and Captain Stafford?"

Sherrill thought a moment.

"Corvet," he replied, "was a very able man; he had insight and mental grasp—and he had the fault which sometimes goes with those, a hesitancy of action. Stafford was an able man too, considerably younger than Corvet. We, ship owners of the lakes, have not the world to trade in, Father Perron, as they have upon