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Page 16
He tried to throw off the oppression of the thing that was creeping
over him, the growing suspicion that he had not passed safely under the
battery of Shan Tung's eyes. With physical things he endeavored to
thrust his mental uneasiness into the background. He lighted one of the
half-dozen cigars McDowell had dropped into his pocket. It was good to
feel a cigar between his teeth again and taste its flavor. At the crest
of the slope on which Brady's bungalow stood, he stopped and looked
about him. Instinctively his eyes turned first to the west. In that
direction half of the town lay under him, and beyond its edge swept the
timbered slopes, the river, and the green pathways of the plains. His
heart beat a little faster as he looked. Half a mile away was a tiny,
parklike patch of timber, and sheltered there, with the river running
under it, was the old home. The building was hidden, but through a
break in the trees he could see the top of the old red brick chimney
glowing in the sun, as if beckoning a welcome to him over the tree
tops. He forgot Shan Tung; he forgot McDowell; he forgot that he was
John Keith, the murderer, in the overwhelming sea of loneliness that
swept over him. He looked out into the world that had once been his,
and all that he saw was that red brick chimney glowing in the sun, and
the chimney changed until at last it seemed to him like a tombstone
rising over the graves of the dead. He turned to the door of the
bungalow with a thickening in his throat and his eyes filmed by a mist
through which for a few moments it was difficult for him to see.
The bungalow was darkened by drawn curtains when he entered. One after
another he let them up, and the sun poured in. Brady had left his place
in order, and Keith felt about him an atmosphere of cheer that was a
mighty urge to his flagging spirits. Brady was a home man without a
wife. The Company's agent had called his place "The Shack" because it
was built entirely of logs, and a woman could not have made it more
comfortable. Keith stood in the big living-room. At one end was a
strong fireplace in which kindlings and birch were already laid,
waiting the touch of a match. Brady's reading table and his easy chair
were drawn up close; his lounging moccasins were on a footstool; pipes,
tobacco, books and magazines littered the table; and out of this
cheering disorder rose triumphantly the amber shoulder of a half-filled
bottle of Old Rye.
Keith found himself chuckling. His grin met the lifeless stare of a
pair of glass eyes in the huge head of an old bull moose over the
mantel, and after that his gaze rambled over the walls ornamented with
mounted heads, pictures, snowshoes, gun-racks and the things which went
to make up the comradeship and business of Brady's picturesque life.
Keith could look through into the little dining-room, and beyond that
was the kitchen. He made an inventory of both and found that McDowell
was right. There were nutcrackers in Brady's establishment. And he
found the bathroom. It was not much larger than a piano box, but the
tub was man's size, and Keith raised a window and poked his head out to
find that it was connected with a rainwater tank built by a genius,
just high enough to give weight sufficient for a water system and low
enough to gather the rain as it fell from the eaves. He laughed
outright, the sort of laugh that comes out of a man's soul not when he
is amused but when he is pleased. By the time he had investigated the
two bedrooms, he felt a real affection for Brady. He selected the
agent's room for his own. Here, too, were pipes and tobacco and books
and magazines, and a reading lamp on a table close to the bedside. Not
until he had made a closer inspection of the living-room did he
discover that the Shack also had a telephone.
By that time he noted that the sun had gone out. Driving up from the
west was a mass of storm clouds. He unlocked a door from which he could
look up the river, and the wind that was riding softly in advance of
the storm ruffled his hair and cooled his face. In it he caught again
the old fancy--the smells of the vast reaches of unpeopled prairie
beyond the rim of the forest, and the luring chill of the distant
mountain tops. Always storm that came down with the river brought to
him voice from the river's end. It came to him from the great mountains
that were a passion with him; it seemed to thunder to him the old
stories of the mightiest fastnesses of the Rockies and stirred in him
the child-bred yearning to follow up his beloved river until he came at
last to the mystery of its birthplace in the cradle of the western
ranges. And now, as he faced the storm, the grip of that desire held
him like a strong hand.
The sky blackened swiftly, and with the rumbling of far-away thunder he
saw the lightning slitting the dark heaven like bayonets, and the fire
of the electrical charges galloped to him and filled his veins. His
heart all at once cried out words that his lips did not utter. Why
should he not answer the call that had come to him through all the
years? Now was the time--and why should he not go? Why tempt fate in
the hazard of a great adventure where home and friends and even hope
were dead to him, when off there beyond the storm was the place of his
dreams? He threw out his arms. His voice broke at last in a cry of
strange ecstasy. Not everything was gone! Not everything was dead! Over
the graveyard of his past there was sweeping a mighty force that called
him, something that was no longer merely an urge and a demand but a
thing that was irresistible. He would go! Tomorrow--today--tonight--he
would begin making plans!
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