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Title: Grist
Author: Murray Leinster
Release Date: February 16, 2022 [eBook #67421]
Language: English
Produced by: Roger Frank and Sue Clark
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GRIST ***
Grist
By Murray Leinster
Author of “A Wireless for the Fangless One,”
“The Captain of the Quiberon,” etc.
THE MILLS OF THE GODS SET UP IN THE NORTHERN FASTNESS
GRIND OUT PERIL AND LOYALTY, FEAR AND COURAGE—AND THE
TESTS THAT ARE TO TRY THE SOULS OF THOSE WHOSE DESTINY
CALLS THEM TO THE LAND OF FROST AND GOLD.
I
He threw back his head and howled eerily. His muzzle lifted to the
stars and the most mournful sound known to man poured from his throat
and was echoed and reëchoed by the hooded cedars and the rocks about
him. He could not have told you why he howled. Dogs are not prone to
introspection. But he knew that his master, who should be in the cabin
yonder, would never come out again. He knew that the dying wisps of
smoke from the chimney would never billow out in thick gray clouds
again. And he knew that the other man—who had come out so hastily and
gone swinging down the river trail—would never, never return.
Cheechako was chained. It had originally been a mark of disgrace, an
unbearable humiliation to a malamute pup, but he did not mind it any
longer. His master had made sleeping quarters for him that were vastly
warmer than a snow-bed even in the coldest weather, and Cheechako
wholeheartedly approved. He was comfortable, he was fed, and Carson
released him now and then to stretch his legs and swore at him
affectionately from time to time, and no reasonable dog will demand
any more. Or so Cheechako viewed it, anyhow.
But now his muzzle tilted up. His eyes half-closed, and from his
throat those desolate and despairing howls poured forth.
_A-a-o-oooo-e-e! A-a-o-oooo-e-e!_ They were a dirge and a lament. They
were sounds of grief and they were noises of despair. Cheechako could
not explain their meaning at all, but when a man dies they spring
full-bodied from that man’s dog’s throat.
The hooded cedars watched, and echoed back the sound. The rocks about
him watched, and gave tongue stilly in a faint reflection of his
sorrow. The river listened, and babbled absently of sympathy and
rippled on. The river has seen too many men die to be disturbed. The
wilds listened. For many miles around the despairing, grief-stricken
howling reached. To tree and forest, and hill and valley, the thin and
muted wailing bore its message. Only the cabin seemed indifferent,
though the tragedy was within it. Somewhere within the four log walls
Carson lay sprawled out. Cheechako knew that he was dead without
knowing how he knew. There had been a shot. Later, the other man had
come out hastily with a pack on his back. He had taken the river trail
and disappeared.
And long into the night, until the pale moonlight faded and died,
Cheechako howled his sorrow for a thing he did not understand. Of his
own predicament, the dog had yet no knowledge. It was natural to be
chained. Food was brought when one was chained. That there was now no
one to bring him food, that no one was likely to come, and that the
most pertinacious of puppy teeth could not work through the chain that
bound him; these things did not disturb him. His head thrown back, his
eyes half-closed, he howled in an ecstasy of grief.
And while he gave vent to his sorrow in the immemorable tradition of
his race, a faint rumbling set up afar off in the wilds. It was hardly
more than a murmur, and maybe it was the wind among the trees. Maybe
it was a minor landslide in the hills not so many miles away—a few
hundred tons of earth and stone that plunged downward when the thaw of
spring released its keystone. Maybe it was any one of any number of
things, even a giant spruce tree crashing thunderously to the ground.
But it lasted a little too long for any such simple explanation. If
one were inclined to be fanciful, one would say it was the mill of one
of the forest gods, grinding the grist of men’s destinies, and set
going now by the murder of which Cheechako howled.
Certainly many unrelated things began to happen which bore obscurely
upon that killing. The man who had fled down-river reflected on his
cleverness and grinned to himself. He opened thick sausage-like bags
and ran his fingers through shining yellow dust. Remembering his
security against detection or punishment, he laughed cacklingly.
And very far away—away down in Seattle—Bob Holliday found courage to
ask a girl to marry him, and promised to go back to Alaska only long
enough to gather together what capital he had accumulated, when they
would be married. Most of what he owned, he told her, was in a placer
claim that he and Sam Carson worked together. He would sell out to Sam
and return. But he would not take her back to the hardships he had
endured. He was filled with a fierce desire to shield and protect her.
That meant money, Outside, of course. And he started north eagerly for
the results of many years’ suffering and work, which Sam Carson was
guarding for him.
And again, in a dingy small building a sleepy mail clerk discovered a
letter that had slipped behind account-books and been hidden for
months on end. He canceled its stamp and dropped it into a mail bag to
go to its proper destination.
Then, the rumbling murmur which might have been the mill of a forest
god off in the wilds stopped abruptly. The grist had had its first
grinding.
But the mill was not put away. Oh, no. Cheechako howled on until the
moonlight paled and day came again. And the letter that had lain so
long was dropped into a canoe and floated down to the coast in charge
of a half-breed paddleman. And Bob Holliday sped north for Alaska and
his partner, Sam Carson, who guarded a small fortune that Holliday had
earned in sweat and agony and fierce battle with the wilds and winter
snows. Holliday was very happy. The money his partner held for him
would mean comforts and even luxuries for the girl he loved.
The mill of the forest god was simply laid aside for a little while.
They grind, not slowly—these mills of the gods—but very swiftly, more
swiftly than the grist can come to their grinding stones. Now and then
they are forced to wait for more. But everything upon the earth comes
to them some time. High ambitions and most base desires, and women’s
laughter and red blood gushing, and all hopes and fears and lusts and
terrors together disappear between the millstones and come out
transformed into the product that the gods desire.
The mill was merely waiting.
II
The place had that indefinable air of desertion that comes upon a
wilderness cabin in such an amazingly short time. The wood-pile, huge,
yet clearly but the remnant of a winter’s supply, had not yet sprouted
any of the mosses and lichens that multiply on dead wood in the short
Alaskan summer. The axe, even, was leaned against the door. Chips
still rested on blades of the quickly-growing grass that comes before
the snow has vanished. A pipe rested on a bench before the house. But
the place was deserted. The feel of emptiness was in the air.
Holliday had drawn in his breath for a shout to announce his coming
when the curious desolation all about struck home. It was almost like
a blow. Every sign and symbol of occupancy. Every possible indication
that the place was what it seemed to be—the winter quarters of an
old-timer thriftily remaining near his claim. And then, suddenly, the
feeling of emptiness that was like death.
He disembarked in silence, his forehead creased in a quick and puzzled
frown. He was walking swiftly when he climbed the bluff, glancing
sharply here and there. A sudden cold apprehension made him hesitate.
Then he shook himself impatiently and moved more quickly still.
Within ten yards of the door he stopped stock-still. And then he
fairly rushed for the cabin and plunged within.
It was a long time later that he came out. He was very pale, and
looked like a man who has been shaken to the core. He was swearing
brokenly. Then he made himself stop and sit down. With shaking fingers
he filled his pipe and lighted it.
“In his bunk,” he said evenly to the universe. “A bullet through his
head. No sign of a fight. It isn’t credible—but there isn’t a sign of
any dust or any supplies, and somebody else had been bunking in there
with him. Murder, of course.”
He smoked. Presently he got up and found a path which he followed. At
its end he saw what he was looking for. He poked about the cradle
there, and expertly fingered the heap of gravel that had been thawed
and dug out to be washed when summer came again.
“He’d cleaned up,” he said evenly. “He must have had a lot of dust,
and the man with him knew it. I’ve got to find that man.”
His hands clenched and unclenched as he went back toward the cabin.
Then he calmed himself again. His eyes searched for a suitable spot
for the thing he had to do.
And then, quite suddenly, “My God!” said Holliday.
It was Cheechako, who had dragged himself to the limit of his chain
and with his last atom of strength managed to whimper faintly.
Cheechako was not pretty to look at. It had been a very long time
since the night that he howled to the stars of his grief for the man
who was dead. And he had been chained fast. Cheechako was alive, and
that was all.
He lay on the ground, looking up with agonized, pitiful eyes. Holliday
stared down at him and reached for his gun in sheer mercy. Then his
eyes hardened.
“No-o-o. I guess not. You’ll be Sam’s dog. You’ll have to stay alive a
while yet. Maybe you can pick out his murderer for me.”
He unbuckled the collar that Cheechako’s most frenzied efforts had not
enabled him to reach, and took the mass of skin and boniness beneath
down toward his canoe. With a face like stone he tended Cheechako with
infinite gentleness.
And that night he left Cheechako wrapped up in his own blankets while
he carved deeply upon a crudely fashioned wooden cross. His expression
frightened Cheechako a little, but the dog lay huddled in the blankets
and gazed at him hungrily. Cheechako hoped desperately that this man
would be his master hereafter. Only, he also hoped desperately that he
would never, never use a chain.
III
Cheechako learned much and forgot a little in the weeks that followed.
When he could stand on his wabbling paws, Holliday took him off
invalid’s diet and fed him more naturally canine dishes—the perpetual
dried or frozen fish of the dog-teams, for instance. Cheechako wolfed
it as he wolfed everything else, and in that connection learned a
lesson. Once in his eagerness he leaped up to snatch it from
Holliday’s hand. His snapping teeth closed on empty air, and he was
soundly thrashed for the effort. Later, he learned not to snarl or
snap if his food was taken squarely from between his teeth. When he
had mastered that, he was tamed. He understood that he was not to try
to bite Holliday under any circumstances whatever. And when he had
mastered the idea he was almost pitifully anxious to prove his loyalty
to Holliday. The only thing was that in learning that he got it into
his head that he was not to snarl at or try to sink his teeth in any
man.
That was possibly why Holliday was disappointed when he took the dog
grimly downstream and made his inquiries as to who had come down in
the two weeks after Carson’s murder. He found the names of every
arrival, and he grimly pursued every one who might have been the man
he was looking for. Each one had a plausible tale to tell. Most of
them were known and could prove their whereabouts at the time of
Carson’s death. But enough had trapped or wintered inland near their
claims to make the absence of any explanation at all no proof of
guilt. That was where Cheechako was to come in.
Always, before his grim interrogation was over, Holliday unobtrusively
allowed Cheechako to draw near. Cheechako had known the man who had
been with Carson when he was murdered. Holliday watched him closely.
He would sniff at the man, glance up at his master, and wag his tail
placatingly. Holliday watched for some sign of recognition. Cheechako
grew to consider it a part of the greeting of every man his master
met. That was the difference between them. Cheechako simply did not
understand. He had already forgotten a great deal of what had happened
to him, and Holliday was his master now. Carson was a dim and misty
figure of the past.
By the time Holliday actually came upon the man of whom he was in
search, Cheechako considered the little ceremony a part of the scheme
of things, not to be deviated from.
They found him camping alone, after trailing him for two days.
“Howdy,” said he, looking up from his fire with its sizzling pan of
beans and bacon.
“Howdy,” said Holliday curtly. “You came down-river about a month
ago?”
The man bent forward over his fire. Cheechako, watching patiently, saw
his whole figure stiffen.
“I come down, yes,” said the camper, stirring his beans. Sweat came
out on his forehead, but he made no movement toward a weapon. He was
not the sort to fight anything out.
“Know Sam Carson?” demanded Holliday.
“Hm—” said the camper. “Seems like I knew him once in Nome.”
His eyes rested on Cheechako, and flicked away. Cheechako knew that he
was recognized and he wagged his tail tentatively, but he had changed
allegiance now. He waited to see what Holliday would do.
“Stop at his cabin?” demanded Holliday grimly.
“Nope,” said the camper. “What’s up?”
“Pup!” said Holliday.
This was Cheechako’s cue. Holliday did not know what Carson had called
him, and “Pup” had been a substitute. Knowing, then, what Holliday
expected of him and anxious to do nothing of which his master would
not approve, Cheechako went forward and sniffed politely at the man’s
legs. He rather expected some sign of recognition. When it came,
Cheechako would respond as cordially as was consonant in a dog who
belonged to someone else. But the man who had stayed with Carson made
no move whatever, though his smell to Cheechako was the smell of a
thing in deadly fear.
Cheechako glanced up at Holliday, and wagged his tail placatingly.
“He don’t seem to know you,” said Holliday grimly. “I guess you
didn’t.”
They camped with the stranger, then, and he told Holliday that his
name was Dugan and that he was a placer man, and told stories at which
Holliday unbent enough to smile faintly.
Holliday was grim and silent, these days, because he had a man-hunt on
his hands, and the gold dust that was to have made a certain girl
happy had been stolen by the murderer of his friend. He listened
abstractedly to Dugan’s jests, but mostly he brooded over the death of
his friend and his own hopes in the same instant.
Cheechako lay at the edge of the circle of firelight and watched the
two men. Mostly he watched Holliday, because Holliday was his master,
but often his eyes dwelt puzzledly on Dugan. He knew Dugan, and Dugan
knew him. Vaguely, a dim remembrance arose, of Dugan in Carson’s
cabin, feeding him a sweet and pleasant-tasting liquid out of a bottle
while he laughed uproariously. Yes, Cheechako remembered it
distinctly. He wondered if Dugan had any more of that pleasant stuff.
Once he rose and started forward tentatively. Dugan had been smelling
quite normally human, but as Cheechako drew near him he again smelled
like something that is afraid. It puzzled Cheechako. He sniffed and
would have gone nearer but first, of course, he looked at Holliday.
And Holliday merely glanced at him and did not notice. Cheechako was
used to such ignoring. He wagged his tail a little and went back
outside the firelight. His master did not want him near.
But later that night, when the two men lay rolled in their blankets in
the smoke of the smudge fire, Cheechako went thoughtfully forward
again. He began to nudge Dugan’s kit with his nose. There might be
some of that sweet-tasting liquid.
Holliday awoke and sat up with a start. The other man had not gone to
sleep.
“What the hell’s your dog doing in my kit?” he demanded hysterically.
“We’ll see,” said Holliday. His voice had a curious edge to it.
Cheechako sniffed about. There was something there that had a familiar
odor. He drew in his breath in a long and luxurious smell. Then he
began to scratch busily.
“I’ll take a look at that,” said Holliday grimly.
He went to where Cheechako scratched, while Dugan moved cautiously
among his blankets. The firelight glinted momentarily on polished
metal among the coverings. The metal thing was pointed at Holliday’s
back, though it trembled slightly.
Holliday looked up.
“Your bacon,” he said, his tone altered. “Get out!” he ordered
Cheechako.
Cheechako went away after wagging his tail placatingly. Presently he
curled up and slept fitfully, the odor he had sniffed permeating all
his dreams. The odor was that of Carson, and Cheechako dreamed of
times in the cabin when Dugan was there. Holliday, too, composed
himself to slumber, but Dugan lay awake and shivered. Some of Carson’s
possessions were in the kit Cheechako had nosed at, and though he had
had his revolver on Holliday, Dugan was by no means sure he could have
summoned the nerve to kill him. He had killed Carson in a fashion
peculiarly his own which did not require that he discharge the weapon
himself. But now he debated in a panicky fear if he had not better
shoot Holliday sleeping. It would be dangerous down here, not like the
hills at all. But it might be best. If that damned dog kept sniffing
around——
The next morning he cursed in a species of hysterical relief when he
saw Cheechako trotting soberly away behind his master. Cheechako
wagged his tail politely in parting. He did not understand why Dugan
had feigned not to remember him. Now they were going to find another
man, and Holliday would expect him to sniff that man’s legs and look
up and wag his tail. It was a ceremony that was part of the scheme of
things. Cheechako simply remembered Dugan as a man who had stayed a
long time with Carson in the cabin upriver, and had fed him sweet
liquid out of a bottle, and now smelled as if he were afraid.
But Holliday, of course, did not know that. Otherwise he would have
been burying Dugan by this time, with a grimly satisfied look upon his
face.
IV
Far off in the wilderness where the cedars meditated beside a deserted
cabin, a faint rumbling murmur set up again. Of course it might have
been the wind in the trees, or a minor landslide in the hills not many
miles away, or even a giant spruce tree crashing thunderously to the
earth. But it lasted just a bit too long for such a simple
explanation. To a fanciful hearer, it might have sounded as if the
mill of the forest god were grinding its grist again.
And just as such an idea would demand, many unrelated things began to
happen which bore obscurely upon the murder of a man now buried deeply
beneath a deeply-carved wooden cross.
Holliday, for instance, received two letters. One was from the girl
who loved him. One was from the dead man, stained and draggled with
long journeying and much forwarding and months on its travels. The
letter from the girl told him pitifully that she loved him and wanted
to be near him, and offered to come and share any trial or hardship
rather than endure the numbing pain of separation. Holliday, of
course, knew better than to take her at her word.
The other letter was very short:
Dear Bob:
I’m sending this down by a Chillicoot buck what stopped to
ask for some matches. The claim is proving up kind of a
bonanza because I already took out near twenty thousand
in dust which makes a damn big poke for you with what you
got me to keep for you. You better look out or I’ll steal
it. Ha, ha.
I got me a new dog that I call Cheechako. He’s a pretty good
dog an’ I got a feller to help me out until you come back an’
he’s taut the pup to drink molasses out of a bottle. You out
to see it.
Well, no more until next time. Yrs,
Sam.
And the man who had come down the river trail and left Cheechako
chained to starve these many long moons past; he found himself growing
short of cash and lacking an easier way to recoup his fortunes,
decided to do some placer work himself. When he worked with Sam Carson
he had marked down a likely spot, but did not trouble to work it
because he could attain to wealth so much more simply. Just a bullet
that he need not even fire himself. He took canoe and went paddling up
the river, having a winter’s supplies bundled up in the bow.
Then the mill stopped again, and again for lack of grist to grind.
Doubtless the forest god to whom it belonged went on about his other
affairs.
V
Cheechako slept within the cabin that winter, stretched out before the
fire and soaking the heat into his body with the luxurious enjoyment
that only a dog can compass. There was no need for the discipline that
before had made his chaining necessary. Holliday’s training had had
better results than Carson’s. Cheechako was a well-mannered dog, now,
who listened soberly when Holliday talked to him.
And Holliday talked often. Loneliness in the wilds is quite different
from loneliness anywhere else. With the snow piled in monster drifts
about the cabin, so that there was an actual tunnel a good part of the
way from the door to the wood-pile, he was utterly isolated from the
world. He had to talk. He told Cheechako confidentially just what the
girl Outside meant to him. He would not have said it to any living
man, but the dog listened soberly. Sometimes Holliday grew morose.
Sometimes he called himself a fool for not bringing her with him—and
then gave thanks that he did not. And he had moments of passionate
jealousy and doubt, wondering if she were waiting for him and
believing in him through all the months when no word from either could
reach the other.
He read her last letter into tiny fragments, long after he could
recite it word for word. He read strange meanings into it, as that she
began to feel her loyalty wavering and in honesty wished to place it
beyond recall. And then he read them out again and was bitterly
ashamed that such things had entered his mind at all. All this was
during the days of storm when he could not even build monster fires
and thaw out gravel to be shifted where the first waters of spring
would wash out its infinitesimal proportion of gold for him.
But Dugan appeared at the cabin in December.
He came on snowshoes and had conquered his first surprise before he
shouted outside the cabin door. Dugan had come over in hopes of
finding some stray reading-matter, anything to break the monotony of
his own cabin some four miles or more away. The smoke warned him that
someone was within and no more than a flicker of his eyelids expressed
surprise that Holliday was the occupant.
Holliday greeted him with a feverish cordiality, pressed tobacco upon
him, bade him remain and eat, presented Cheechako and they talked
interminably. Dugan was jollity itself. He was soon assured that
Holliday had no suspicion of him. He had left no clue after the murder
and Cheechako—who might have gamboled about him—had been trained by
Holliday into the perfection of canine manners. Cheechako remembered,
yes, but he did not associate Dugan with the death of his former
master. And in any event he was a dog, and there was but one master in
the world for him. Injuries done to a past owner would not arouse
Cheechako now, though he would fight to the last drop of his blood for
Holliday. Dugan had every reason in the world to feel secure.
He was secure. In his gratitude for having someone to talk to,
Holliday would have welcomed the devil himself. When Dugan finally
left for his own cabin, Holliday was more nearly normal than for
months.
And it may be that Dugan’s presence kept Holliday sane that winter. He
was surely used to loneliness, but no such loneliness as possessed him
now. No man is lonely who can keep his brain busy with the things of
the moment and the place he is in, but Holliday could not do that. A
picture of the girl who waited for him was always at hand. His
presence and his desperate work was due to her. He could not help
thinking and dreaming of her, and that thinking and dreaming made the
solitude into a corroding horror.
Dugan changed all that. He was someone to talk to. Holliday even told
him about the girl. He talked for hours about her, while Cheechako lay
at one side of the cabin floor and watched gravely, his ears alert and
his eyes somber. Often he watched Dugan, and vague memories crept
disturbingly about his mind. Here, in this same cabin——
Dugan knew about the murder, too, how Holliday had come joyously to
the cabin—and found his best friend murdered and his happiness
destroyed in the one instant. Sam Carson had been the keeper of most
of Holliday’s possessions, and they had been stolen by the murderer.
It was probably his own feigned sympathy and secret sardonic amusement
that suggested a duplication of his former feat to Dugan. Dugan’s own
claim was rich—how rich he could not tell until spring. But Holliday’s
claim was little worse. Carson had skimmed the cream, but the rest was
worth taking, if it could be done without risk.
And Dugan, who had not nerve enough to shoot a man in cold blood, and
was too cowardly to pick a fight, grinned obscurely to himself. He
fingered his own pokes, which would be bulging when spring came. He
thought of Holliday’s. And then he began to whittle out a little
contrivance of wood and leathern thongs, which looked very much like a
trap, but was much more deadly. It was a clever little idea of his
own. Perfectly safe, and absolutely no risk. Suddenly, he stooped and
listened. It seemed as if some noise to which his ears were
unconsciously attuned had suddenly ceased.
Maybe the mill had stopped again.
VI
And then spring came. From the trees came cracklings as their coatings
of sleet and solidified snow were stripped off and fell melting to the
earth below. From the river came minor rumblings as the thawed streams
of the mountains poured their waters into it, and its surface ice,
grown thinner, cracked across and spun downstream in crumbling icepans
toward the sea. The rocks, from hooded things in dazzling cerements,
peered out naked and glistening like newborn seals at the world that
was stirring for its feverish growth of summer. The spruce buds
swelled to bursting. Slowly dwindling patches of snow disclosed
incongruously green grass prematurely sprouted. And the wild things
seemed to awake. Bull caribou roared their challenges in the
indefinite distance. Foxes moved about, keen and joyously savage, no
longer hampered by the snow. Now and then the winter’s windrift above
some hidden hollow stirred, and a peevish bear emerged from his long
sleep, sleepily ferocious.
And Holliday worked like a madman. All day long he shoveled his gravel
and dirt into the cradle through which a small stream ran. After the
first few days he sang. It might be that he would not have a sum that
would satisfy him, but he would squander some of it and see the girl
who loved him. He would see her and speak to her again! It was no
wonder that he sang.
And Dugan? He worked, too, and his eyes glistened at the size of his
clean-ups. He filled one poke, then another, and still another as time
went on. But Dugan would never be satisfied with what was his own. He
went over to Holliday’s cabin now and then, and listened while
Holliday told him excitedly of the miracle that would happen. He was
going Outside! In a little while longer. He would see the girl.
He told the whole course of his progress to the man who had murdered
his friend, while Cheechako sat between his feet and regarded Dugan
speculatively. Cheechako could not understand why Dugan so
consistently ignored him. It seemed illogical to the dog, because he
remembered that in this same cabin——
And at last Holliday came back from the cradle, singing at the top of
his voice.
Cheechako had caught some of his festive spirit and danced clumsily
about him. Dugan was sitting on the bench before the cabin and his
eyelids flickered when Holliday came into view.
“I’m through!” shouted Holliday, at sight of his visitor. “Dugan, I’m
through! I’m going down-river in the morning with a fat poke in my
pack to see the most wonderful girl in the world!”
Dugan grinned. He had been at the cabin for some little time, and
there was a surprise he had prepared for Holliday inside. It was the
same surprise he had prepared for Carson.
“I’m going down tomorrow myself,” he said. “Closed up my shack and
quit my workings.”
“We’ll celebrate,” said Holliday exuberantly. “Man! I’m going Outside
to the most wonderful——”
Cheechako sniffed the air in the cabin. Dugan did not smell normally
human. He smelled as if he were afraid. And yet he was grinning and
cracking jokes as if he shared in Holliday’s uproarious happiness.
Cheechako continued to be puzzled and to grow more puzzled. Two or
three times he cocked up his ears as if listening to a faint rumbling
murmur far off in the wilds which might have been anything—even the
mill of a forest god, grinding the grist of men’s destinies. But
mostly he watched the two men.
Dugan produced a bottle, long hoarded, but Holliday would not touch
it. He wanted to stay awake, he said, that no atom of his wonderful
good luck should go untasted to the full. He would be starting
downstream at daybreak. And Dugan grinned, and drank himself.
Holliday began to cook a festive meal. The smells were savory and
delicious, but Cheechako’s nose suddenly attracted him to an unusual
spot. He went tentatively toward Holliday’s bunk. Being a
well-mannered dog, he knew he should never climb upon his master’s
bed, but something drew him there irresistibly. He sniffed, and
Dugan’s smell was suddenly that of a thing in deadly fear. Cheechako
turned his head and regarded him puzzledly. Dugan’s scent was on his
master’s blankets, too, and Dugan had no business to be there.
Cheechako sniffed, bewildered. This other odor——
“There’s just one thing,” said Holliday with a sudden wistful gravity.
“Old Sam’s dead. I told you how he was murdered. I wish—well, I wish
he was going Outside with me.”
The faint rumbling outside that sounded like millstones grinding grew
suddenly loud and harsh, as if the stones were crumbling up the last
stray grains that had been fed to them. Cheechako cocked his ears, but
that was only a noise. There was a queer smell on his master’s bunk.
He heaved up his forepaws to sniff it more nearly.
“Cheechako!” snapped Dugan. Dugan had gone suddenly pale, and more
than ever he had the smell of fear about him.
Holliday lifted his head and a curious expression came upon his face.
Dugan went over and took Cheechako by the collar.
“Shedding fleas on your bunk,” he said to Holliday, grinning. “But he
ought to share in the celebration, too. Got any molasses?”
He knew, of course. He reached up and took down the bottle of syrup
Holliday had saved as a supreme luxury.
“Taught a dog to do this once,” grinned Dugan. “Here, you, Cheechako!
Open your mouth!”
Cheechako sniffed at his leg. Then he saw the bottle. His eyes danced.
Dugan had remembered at last! He jumped up to lick eagerly.
“Ho!” roared Dugan, as Cheechako struggled frantically to coax out the
sticky sweet stuff faster than it would flow. “I knew you’d like it!
Watch him, Holliday!”
Holliday straightened up.
“You’ve never heard me call that dog ‘Cheechako,’” he said queerly.
“I’ve always called him ‘Pup.’ The only other man who’d know his name
would be Sam Carson and—” Holliday’s voice changed swiftly—“and the
man who killed him! And that trick— By God, you’re Sam Carson’s
murderer!”
His revolver flashed out. Dugan gasped. The bottle fell to the floor
and Cheechako lapped eagerly at its exuding contents.
“You shot him from behind,” said Holliday savagely. “With your gun not
a foot from his head! Get out that gun now, Dugan. I give you just two
seconds!”
Dugan’s teeth chattered. His eyes darted despairingly to the bunk.
Holliday’s face was like stone. There was no faintest trace of mercy
in it. With a sudden squeal like that of a cornered rat, Dugan rushed
for him.
And Holliday’s revolver was out and in his hand, but Dugan’s
open-handed attack brought an instinctive response in kind. His free
fist shot out in a terrific blow. It caught Dugan squarely between the
eyes and hurled him backward. He staggered, and his foot crushed
Cheechako’s paw. The dog leaped up with a yelp and bared teeth and his
movement was enough to upset Dugan’s balance completely. He toppled
backward and a sudden terrible scream filled all the cabin.
He fell against the bunk and his arms clutched wildly, while his face
showed only frozen horror. Then he crashed down on the blankets.
And there was a bellowing roar and a burst of smoke from the bunk.
Dugan did not even shudder. He lay quite still. Presently a sullen
little “drip-drip-drip” sounded on the floor.
Holliday bent over and pawed among the blankets. He brought out a
curious little contrivance, very much like a trap. It was a board with
a revolver tied to it and a thong so arranged that pressure on the
thong would discharge the revolver into the source of the pressure.
Cheechako sniffed at it. It was the source of the peculiar odor he had
noted in his master’s bunk. He wagged his tail placatingly and looked
up at Holliday.
“Right where my head would have gone,” said Holliday, shuddering a
little in spite of himself, “when I lay down to sleep. And he was
going to stay here overnight. I see how he killed Carson now.
_Pfaugh!_”
Sick with disgust, and a little shaken, he flung down the board.
Holliday did not go down-river at daybreak. It was nearer noon when he
started. And instead of one deeply-carved cross in the ground about
the cabin there were two. One read:
SAM CARSON
MURDERED
JUNE 2, 19—
And the other:
HIS MURDERER
JUNE 2, 19—
Holliday paddled down the river with Cheechako in the bow of his
canoe, looking with bright and curious eyes at all that was to be
seen. Holliday had the gold that he had washed out himself during the
winter. He had, besides, gold taken from Dugan’s pokes to the amount
that Dugan had stolen. The surplus he had scattered in the river. He
did not want it. He was going Outside to the girl who had waited for
him.
And the mill? Oh, the mill had ground up all its grist. It stopped,
until one day a half-breed killed a white man in some dispute over an
Indian woman, and the echo of the shot traveled thinly over the wilds.
And then a faint rumbling murmur set up which might, of course, have
been the wind in the trees, or a landslide in the hills not so very
far away. But, equally, of course, it might not.
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the July 10, 1924 issue
of Short Stories magazine.]
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