Back to God's Country and Other Stories - James Oliver Curwood (summer reads .txt) 📗

and a cotton wick sputtered in a pan of caribou grease on the table, Falkner’s chief diversion was to tell the mouse all about his plans, and hopes, and what had happened in the past. He took an almost boyish pleasure in these one-sided entertainments—and yet, after all, they were not entirely one-sided, for the mouse would keep its bright, serious-looking little eyes on Falkner’s face; it seemed to understand, if it could not talk.

Falkner loved to tell the little fellow of the wonderful days of four or five years ago away down in the sunny Ohio valley where he had courted the Girl and where they lived before they moved to the farm in Canada. He tried to impress upon Little Jim’s mind what it meant for a great big, unhandsome fellow like himself to be loved by a tender slip of a girl whose hair was like gold and whose eyes were as blue as the wood-violets. One evening he fumbled for a minute under his bunk and came back to the table with a worn and finger-marked manila envelope, from which he drew tenderly and with almost trembling care a long, shining tress of golden hair.

“That HERS,” he said proudly, placing it on the table close to the mouse. “An’ she’s got so much of it you can’t see her to the hips when she takes it down; an’ out in the sun it shines like—like—glory!”

The stove door crashed open, and a number of coals fell out upon the floor. For a few minutes Falkner was busy, and when he returned to the table he gave a gasp of astonishment. The curl and the mouse were gone! Little Jim had almost reached its nest with its lovely burden when Falkner captured it.

“You little cuss!” he breathed revently. “Now I know you come from her! I know it!”

In the weeks that followed the storm Falkner again followed his trap-lines, and scattered poison-baits for the white foxes on the Barren. Early in January the second great storm of that year came from out of the North. It gave no warning, and Falkner was caught ten miles from camp. He was making a struggle for life before he reached the shack. He was exhausted, and half blinded. He could hardly stand on his feet when he staggered up against his own door. He could see nothing when he entered. He stumbled over a stool, and fell to the floor. Before he could rise a strange weight was upon him. He made no resistance, for the storm had driven the last ounce of strength from his body.

“It’s been a long chase, but I’ve got you now, Falkner,” he heard a triumphant voice say. And then came the dreaded formula, feared to the uttermost limits of the great Northern wilderness: “I warn you! You are my prisoner, in the name of His Majesty, the King!”

Corporal Carr, of the Royal Mounted of the Northwest, was a man without human sympathies. He was thin faced, with a square, bony jaw, and lips that formed a straight line. His eyes were greenish, like a cat’s, and were constantly shifting. He was a beast of prey, as much as the wolf, the lynx, or the fox—and his prey was men. Only such a man as Carr, alone would have braved the treacherous snows and the intense cold of the Arctic winter to run him down. Falkner knew that, as an hour later he looked over the roaring stove at his captor. About Carr there was something of the unpleasant quickness, the sinuous movement, of the little white ermine—the outlaw of the wilderness. His eyes were as merciless. At times Falkner caught the same red glint in them. And above his despair, the utter hopelessness of his situation, there rose in him an intense hatred and loathing of the man.

Falkner’s hands were then securely tied behind him.

“I’d put the irons on you,” Carr had explained a hard, emotionless voice, “only I lost them somewhere back there.”

Beyond that he had not said a dozen words. He had built up the fire, thawed himself out, and helped himself to food. Now, for the first time, he loosened up a bit.

“I’ve had a devil of a chase,” he said bitterly, a cold glitter in his eyes as he looked at Falkner. “I’ve been after you three months, and now that I’ve got you this accursed storm is going to hold me up! And I left my dogs and outfit a mile back in the scrub.”

“Better go after ‘em,” replied Falkner. “If you don’t there won’t be any dogs an’ outfit by morning.”

Corporal Carr rose to his feet and went to the window. In a moment he turned.

“I’ll do that,” he said. “Stretch yourself out on the bunk. I’ll have to lace you down pretty tight to keep you from playing a trick on me.”

There was something so merciless and brutal in his eyes and voice that Falkner felt like leaping upon him, even with his hands tied behind his back.

He was glad, however, that Carr had decided to go. He was, filled with an overwhelming desire to be rid of him, if only for an hour.

He went to the bunk and lay down. Corporal Carr approached, pulling a roll of babiche cord from his pocket.

“If you don’t mind you might tie my hands in front instead of behind,” suggested Falkner. “It’s goin’ to be mighty unpleasant to have ‘em under me, if I’ve got to lay here for an hour or two.”

“Not on your life I won’t tie ‘em in front!” snapped Carr, his little eyes glittering. And then he gave a cackling laugh, and his eyes were as green as a cat’s. “An’ it won’t be half so unpleasant as having something ‘round your NECK!” he joked.

“I wish I was free,” breathed Falkner, his chest heaving. “I wish we could fight, man t’ man. I’d be willing to hang then, just to have the chance to break your neck. You ain’t a man of the Law. You’re a devil.”

Carr laughed the sort of laugh that sends a chill up one’s back, and drew the caribou-skin cord tight about Falkner’s ankles.

“Can’t blame me for being a little careful,” he said in his revolting way. “By your hanging I become a Sergeant. That’s my reward for running you down.”

He lighted the lamp and filled the stove before he left the cabin. From the door he looked back at Falkner, and his face was not like a man’s, but like that of some terrible death-spirit, ghostly, and thin, and exultant in the dim glow of the lamp. As he opened the door the roar of the blizzard and a gust of snow filled the cabin. Then it closed, and a groaning curse fell from Falkner’s lips. He strained fiercely at the thongs that bound him, but after the first few minutes he lay still breathing hard, knowing that every effort he made only tightened the caribou-skin cord that bound him.

On his back, he listened to the storm. It was filled with the same strange cries and moaning sound that had almost driven him to madness, and now they sent through him a shivering chill that he had not felt before, even in the darkest and most hopeless hours of his loneliness and despair. A breath that was almost a sob broke from his lips as a vision of the Girl and the Kid came to shut out from his ears the moaning tumult of the wind. A few hours before he had been filled with hope—almost happiness, and now he was lost. From such a man as Carr there was no hope for mercy, or of escape. Flat on his back, he closed his eyes, and tried to think—to scheme something that might happen in his favor, to foresee an opportunity that might give him one last chance. And then, suddenly, he heard a sound. It traveled over the blanket that formed a pillow for his head. A cool, soft little nose touched his ear, and then tiny feet ran swiftly over his shoulder, and halted on his breast. He opened his eyes, and stared.

“You little cuss!” he breathed. A hundred times he had spoken those words, and each time they were of increasing wonder and adoration. “You little cuss!” he whispered again, and he chuckled aloud.

The mouse was humped on his breast in that curious little ball that it made of itself, and was eyeing him, Jim thought, in a questioning sort of way, “What’s the matter with you?” it seemed to ask. “Where are your hands?”

And Jim answered:

“They’ve got me, old man. Now what the dickens are we going to do?”

The mouse began investigating. It examined his shoulder, the end of his chin, and ran along his arm, as far as it could go.

“Now what do you think of that!” Falkner exclaimed softly. “The little cuss is wondering where my hands are!” Gently he rolled over on his side.

“There they are,” he said, “hitched tighter ‘n bark to a tree!”

He wiggled his fingers, and in a moment he felt the mouse. The little creature ran across the opened palm of his hand to his wrist, and then every muscle in Falkner’s body grew tense, and one of the strangest cries that ever fell from human lips came from his. The mouse had found once more the dried hide-flesh of which the snowshoe webs were made. It had found babiche. And it had begun TO GNAW!

In the minutes that followed Falkner scarcely breathed. He could feel the mouse when it worked. Above the stifled beating of his heart he could hear its tiny jaws. In those moments he knew that his last hope of life hung in the balance. Five, ten minutes passed, and not until then did he strain at the thongs that bound his wrists. Was that the bed that had snapped? Or was it the breaking of one of the babiche cords? He strained harder. The thongs were loosening; his wrists were freer; with a cry that sent the mouse scurrying to the floor he doubled himself half erect, and fought like a madman. Five minutes later and he was free.

He staggered to his feet, and looked at his wrists. They were torn and bleeding. His second thought was of Corporal Carr—and a weapon. The man-hunter had taken the precaution to empty the chambers of Falkner’s revolver and rifle and throw his cartridges out in the snow. But his skinning-knife was still in its sheath and belt, and he buckled it about his waist. He had no thought of killing Carr, though he hated the man almost to the point of murder. But his lips set in a grim smile as he thought of what he WOULD do.

He knew that when Carr returned he would not enter at once into the cabin. He was the sort of man who would never take an unnecessary chance. He would go first to the little window—and look in. Falkner turned the lamp-wick lower, and placed the lamp on the table directly between the window and the bunk. Then he rolled his blankets into something like a human form, and went to the window to see the effect. The bunk was in deep shadow. From the window Corporal Carr could not see beyond the lamp. Then Falkner waited, out of range of the window, and close to the door.

It was not long before he heard something above the wailing of the storm. It was the whine of a dog, and he knew that a moment later the Corporal’s ghostly face was peering in at the window. Then there came the sudden, swift opening of the door, and Carr sprang in like a cat, his hand on