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Alaskan, The

<h2>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> In the moment of stillness between them, when their hearts seemed to have stopped beating that they might not lose the faintest whispering of the twilight, a sound came to Alan, and he knew it was the toe of a boot striking against stone. Not a foot in his tribe would have made that sound; none but Stampede Smith's or his own. "Were they many?" he asked. "I could not see. The sun was darkening. But five or six were running--" "Behind us?" "Yes." "And they saw us?" "I think so. It was but a moment, and they were a part of the dusk." He found her hand and held it closely. Her fingers clung to his, and he could hear her quick breathing as he unbuttoned the flap of his automatic holster. "You think they have come?" she whispered, and a cold dread was in her voice. "Possibly. My people would not appear from that direction. You are not afraid?" "No, no, I am not afraid." "Yet you are trembling." "It is this strange gloom, Alan." Never had the arctic twilight gone more completely. Not half a dozen times had he seen the phenomenon in all his years on the tundras, where thunder-storm and the putting out of the summer sun until twilight thickens into the gloom of near-night is an occurrence so rare that it is more awesome than the weirdest play of the northern lights. It seemed to him now that what was happening was a miracle, the play of a mighty hand opening their way to salvation. An inky wall was shutting out the world where the glow of the midnight sun should have been. It was spreading quickly; shadows became part of the gloom, and this gloom crept in, thickening, drawing nearer, until the tundra was a weird chaos, neither night nor twilight, challenging vision until eyes strained futilely to penetrate its mystery. And as it gathered about them, enveloping them in their own narrowing circle of vision, Alan was thinking quickly. It had taken him only a moment to accept the significance of the running figures his companion had seen. Graham's men were near, had seen them, and were getting between them and the range. Possibly it was a scouting party, and if there were no more than five or six, the number which Mary had counted, he was quite sure of the situation. But there might be a dozen or fifty of them. It was possible Graham and Rossland were advancing upon the range with their entire force. He had at no time tried to analyze just what this force might be, except to assure himself that with the overwhelming influence behind him, both political and financial, and fired by a passion for Mary Standish that had revealed itself as little short of madness, Graham would hesitate at no convention of law or humanity to achieve his end. Probably he was playing the game so that he would be shielded by the technicalities of the law, if it came to a tragic end. His gunmen would undoubtedly be impelled to a certain extent by an idea of authority. For Graham was an injured husband "rescuing" his wife, while he--Alan Holt--was the woman's abductor and paramour, and a fit subject to be shot upon sight! His free hand gripped the butt of his pistol as he led the way straight ahead. The sudden gloom helped to hide in his face the horror he felt of what that "rescue" would mean to Mary Standish; and then a cold and deadly definiteness possessed him, and every nerve in his body gathered itself in readiness for whatever might happen. If Graham's men had seen them, and were getting between them and retreat, the neck of the trap lay ahead--and in this direction Alan walked so swiftly that the girl was almost running at his side. He could not hear her footsteps, so lightly they fell! her fingers were twined about his own, and he could feel the silken caress of her loose hair. For half a mile he kept on, watching for a moving shadow, listening for a sound. Then he stopped. He drew Mary into his arms and held her there, so that her head lay against his breast. She was panting, and he could feel and hear her thumping heart. He found her parted lips and kissed them. "You are not afraid?" he asked again. Her head made a fierce little negative movement against his breast. "No!" He laughed softly at the beautiful courage with which she lied. "Even if they saw us, and are Graham's men, we have given them the slip," he comforted her. "Now we will circle eastward back to the range. I am sorry I hurried you so. We will go more slowly." "We must travel faster," she insisted. "I want to run." Her fingers sought his hand and clung to it again as they set out. At intervals they stopped, staring about them into nothingness, and listening. Twice Alan thought he heard sounds which did not belong to the night. The second time the little fingers tightened about his own, but his companion said no word, only her breath seemed to catch in her throat for an instant. At the end of another half-hour it was growing lighter, yet the breath of storm seemed nearer. The cool promise of it touched their cheeks, and about them were gathering whispers and eddies of a thirsty earth rousing to the sudden change. It was lighter because the wall of cloud seemed to be distributing itself over the whole heaven, thinning out where its solid opaqueness had lain against the sun. Alan could see the girl's face and the cloud of her hair. Hollows and ridges of the tundra were taking more distinct shape when they came into a dip, and Alan recognized a thicket of willows behind which a pool was hidden. The thicket was only half a mile from home. A spring was near the edge of the willows, and to this he led the girl, made her a place to kneel, and showed her how to cup the cool water in the palms of her hands. While she inclined her head to drink, he held back her hair and rested with his lips pressed to it. He heard the trickle of water running between her fingers, her little laugh of half-pleasure, half-fear, which in another instant broke into a startled scream as he half gained his feet to meet a crashing body that catapulted at him from the concealment of the willows. A greater commotion in the thicket followed the attack; then another voice, crying out sharply, a second cry from Mary Standish, and he found himself on his knees, twisted backward and fighting desperately to loosen a pair of gigantic hands at his throat. He could hear the girl struggling, but she did not cry out again. In an instant, it seemed, his brain was reeling. He was conscious of a futile effort to reach his gun, and could see the face over him, grim and horrible in the gloom, as the merciless hands choked the life from him. Then he heard a shout, a loud shout, filled with triumph and exultation as he was thrown back; his head seemed leaving his shoulders; his body crumbled, and almost spasmodically his leg shot out with the last strength that was in him. He was scarcely aware of the great gasp that followed, but the fingers loosened at his throat, the face disappeared, and the man who was killing him sank back. For a precious moment or two Alan did not move as he drew great breaths of air into his lungs. Then he felt for his pistol. The holster was empty. He could hear the panting of the girl, her sobbing breath very near him, and life and strength leaped back into his body. The man who had choked him was advancing again, on hands and knees. In a flash Alan was up and on him like a lithe cat. His fist beat into a bearded face; he called out to Mary as he struck, and through his blows saw her where she had fallen to her knees, with a second hulk bending over her, almost in the water of the little spring from which she had been drinking. A mad curse leaped from his lips. He was ready to kill now; he wanted to kill--to destroy what was already under his hands that he might leap upon this other beast, who stood over Mary Standish, his hands twisted in her long hair. Dazed by blows that fell with the force of a club the bearded man's head sagged backward, and Alan's fingers dug into his throat. It was a bull's neck. He tried to break it. Ten seconds--twenty--half a minute at the most--and flesh and bone would have given way--but before the bearded man's gasping cry was gone from his lips the second figure leaped upon Alan. He had no time to defend himself from this new attack. His strength was half gone, and a terrific blow sent him reeling. Blindly he reached out and grappled. Not until his arms met those of his fresh assailant did he realize how much of himself he had expended upon the other. A sickening horror filled his soul as he felt his weakness, and an involuntary moan broke from his lips. Even then he would have cut out his tongue to have silenced that sound, to have kept it from the girl. She was creeping on her hands and knees, but he could not see. Her long hair trailed in the trampled earth, and in the muddied water of the spring, and her hands were groping--groping--until they found what they were seeking. Then she rose to her feet, carrying the rock on which one of her hands had rested when she knelt to drink. The bearded man, bringing himself to his knees, reached out drunkenly, but she avoided him and poised herself over Alan and his assailant. The rock descended. Alan saw her then; he heard the one swift, terrible blow, and his enemy rolled away from him, limply and without sound. He staggered to his feet and for a moment caught the swaying girl in his arms. The bearded man was rising. He was half on his feet when Alan was at his throat again, and they went down together. The girl heard blows, then a heavier one, and with an exclamation of triumph Alan stood up. By chance his hand had come in contact with his fallen pistol. He clicked the safety down; he was ready to shoot, ready to continue the fight with a gun. "Come," he said. His voice was gasping, strangely unreal and thick. She came to him and put her hand in his again, and it was wet and sticky with tundra mud from the spring. Then they climbed to the swell of the plain, away from the pool and the willows. In the air about them, creeping up from the outer darkness of the strange twilight, were clearer whispers now, and with these sounds of storm, borne from the west, came a hallooing voice. It was answered from straight ahead. Alan held the muddied little hand closer in his own and set out for the range-houses, from which direction the last voice had come. He knew what was happening. Graham's men were cleverer than he had supposed; they had encircled the tundra side of the range, and some of them were closing in on the willow pool, from which the triumphant shout of the bearded man's companion had come. They were wondering why the call was not repeated, and were hallooing. Every nerve in Alan's body was concentrated for swift and terrible action, for the desperateness of their situation had surged upon him like a breath of fire, unbelievable, and yet true. Back at the willows they would have killed him. The hands at his throat had sought his life. Wolves and not men were about them on the plain; wolves headed by two monsters of the human pack, Graham and Rossland. Murder and lust and mad passion were hidden in the darkness; law and order and civilization were hundreds of miles away. If Graham won, only the unmapped tundras would remember this night, as the deep, dark kloof remembered in its gloom the other tragedy of more than half a century ago. And the girl at his side, already disheveled and muddied by their hands-- His mind could go no farther, and angry protest broke in a low cry from his lips. The girl thought it was because of the shadows that loomed up suddenly in their path. There were two of them, and she, too, cried out as voices commanded them to stop. Alan caught a swift up-movement of an arm, but his own was quicker. Three spurts of flame darted in lightning flashes from his pistol, and the man who had raised his arm crumpled to the earth, while the other dissolved swiftly into the storm-gloom. A moment later his wild shouts were assembling the pack, while the detonations of Alan's pistol continued to roll over the tundra. The unexpectedness of the shots, their tragic effect, the falling of the stricken man and the flight of the other, brought no word from Mary Standish. But her breath was sobbing, and in the lifting of the purplish gloom she turned her face for an instant to Alan, tensely white, with wide-open eyes. Her hair covered her like a shining veil, and where it clustered in a disheveled mass upon her breast Alan saw her hand thrusting itself forward from its clinging concealment, and in it--to his amazement--was a pistol. He recognized the weapon--one of a brace of light automatics which his friend, Carl Lomen, had presented to him several Christmas seasons ago. Pride and a strange exultation swept over him. Until now she had concealed the weapon, but all along she had prepared to fight--to fight with him against their enemies! He wanted to stop and take her in his arms, and with his kisses tell her how splendid she was. But instead of this he sped more swiftly ahead, and they came into the nigger-head bottom which lay in a narrow barrier between them and the range. Through this ran a trail scarcely wider than a wagon-track, made through the sea of hummocks and sedge-boles and mucky pitfalls by the axes and shovels of his people; finding this, Alan stopped for a moment, knowing that safety lay ahead of them. The girl leaned against him, and then was almost a dead weight in his arms. The last two hundred yards had taken the strength from her body. Her pale face dropped back, and Alan brushed the soft hair away from it, and kissed her lips and her eyes, while the pistol lay clenched against his breast. Even then, too hard-run to speak, she smiled at him, and Alan caught her up in his arms and darted into the narrow path which he knew their pursuers would not immediately find if they could bet beyond their vision. He was joyously amazed at her lightness. She was like a child in his arms, a glorious little goddess hidden and smothered in her long hair, and he held her closer as he hurried toward the cabins, conscious of the soft tightening of her arms about his neck, feeling the sweet caress of her panting breath, strengthened and made happy by her helplessness. Thus they came out of the bottom as the first mist of slowly approaching rain touched his face. He could see farther now--half-way back over the narrow trail. He climbed a slope, and here Mary Standish slipped from his arms and stood with new strength, looking into his face. His breath was coming in little breaks, and he pointed. Faintly they could make out the shadows of the corral buildings. Beyond them were no lights penetrating the gloom from the windows of the range of houses. The silence of the place was death-like. And then something grew out of the earth almost at their feet. A hollow cry followed the movement, a cry that was ghostly and shivering, and loud enough only for them to hear, and Sokwenna stood at their side. He talked swiftly. Only Alan understood. There was something unearthly and spectral in his appearance; his hair and beard were wet; his eyes shot here and there in little points of fire; he was like a gnome, weirdly uncanny as he gestured and talked in his monotone while he watched the nigger-head bottom. When he had finished, he did not wait for an answer, but turned and led the way swiftly toward the range houses. "What did he say?" asked the girl. "That he is glad we are back. He heard the shots and came to meet us." "And what else?" she persisted. "Old Sokwenna is superstitious--and nervous. He said some things that you wouldn't understand. You would probably think him mad if he told you the spirits of his comrades slain in the kloof many years ago were here with him tonight, warning him of things about to happen. Anyway, he has been cautious. No sooner were we out of sight than he hustled every woman and child in the village on their way to the mountains. Keok and Nawadlook wouldn't go. I'm glad of that, for if they were pursued and overtaken by men like Graham and Rossland--" "Death would be better," finished Mary Standish, and her hand clung more tightly to his arm. "Yes, I think so. But that can not happen now. Out in the open they had us at a disadvantage. But we can hold Sokwenna's place until Stampede and the herdsmen come. With two good rifles inside, they won't dare to assault the cabin with their naked hands. The advantage is all ours now; we can shoot, but they won't risk the use of their rifles." "Why?" "Because you will be inside. Graham wants you alive, not dead. And bullets--" They had reached Sokwenna's door, and in that moment they hesitated and turned their faces back to the gloom out of which they had fled. Voices came suddenly from beyond the corrals. There was no effort at concealment. The buildings were discovered, and men called out loudly and were answered from half a dozen points out on the tundra. They could hear running feet and sharp commands; some were cursing where they were entangled among the nigger-heads, and the sound of hurrying foes came from the edge of the ravine. Alan's heart stood still. There was something terribly swift and businesslike in this gathering of their enemies. He could hear them at his cabin. Doors opened. A window fell in with a crash. Lights flared up through the gray mist. It was then, from the barricaded attic window over their heads, that Sokwenna's rifle answered. A single shot, a shriek, and then a pale stream of flame leaped out from the window as the old warrior emptied his gun. Before the last of the five swift shots were fired, Alan was in the cabin, barring the door behind him. Shaded candles burned on the floor, and beside them crouched Keok and Nawadlook. A glance told him what Sokwenna had done. The room was an arsenal. Guns lay there, ready to be used; heaps of cartridges were piled near them, and in the eyes of Keok and Nawadlook blazed deep and steady fires as they held shining cartridges between their fingers, ready to thrust them into the rifle chambers as fast as the guns were emptied. In the center of the room stood Mary Standish. The candles, shaded so they would not disclose the windows, faintly illumined her pale face and unbound hair and revealed the horror in her eyes as she looked at Alan. He was about to speak, to assure her there was no danger that Graham's men would fire upon the cabin--when hell broke suddenly loose out in the night. The savage roar of guns answered Sokwenna's fusillade, and a hail of bullets crashed against the log walls. Two of them found their way through the windows like hissing serpents, and with a single movement Alan was at Mary's side and had crumpled her down on the floor beside Keok and Nawadlook. His face was white, his brain a furnace of sudden, consuming fire. "I thought they wouldn't shoot at women," he said, and his voice was terrifying in its strange hardness. "I was mistaken. And I am sure--now--that I understand." With his rifle he cautiously approached the window. He was no longer guessing at an elusive truth. He knew what Graham was thinking, what he was planning, what he intended to do, and the thing was appalling. Both he and Rossland knew there would be some way of sheltering Mary Standish in Sokwenna's cabin; they were accepting a desperate gamble, believing that Alan Holt would find a safe place for her, while he fought until he fell. It was the finesse of clever scheming, nothing less than murder, and he, by this combination of circumstances and plot, was the victim marked for death. The shooting had stopped, and the silence that followed it held a significance for Alan. They were giving him an allotted time in which to care for those under his protection. A trap-door was in the floor of Sokwenna's cabin. It opened into a small storeroom and cellar, which in turn possessed an air vent leading to the outside, overlooking the ravine. In the candle-glow Alan saw the door of this trap propped open with a stick. Sokwenna, too, was clever. Sokwenna had foreseen. Crouched under the window, he looked at the girls. Keok, with a rifle in her hand, had crept to the foot of the ladder leading up to the attic, and began to climb it. She was going to Sokwenna, to load for him. Alan pointed to the open trap. "Quick, get into that!" he cried. "It is the only safe place. You can load there and hand out the guns." Mary Standish looked at him steadily, but did not move. She was clutching a rifle in her hands. And Nawadlook did not move. But Keok climbed steadily and disappeared in the darkness above. "Go into the cellar!" commanded Alan. "Good God, if you don't--" A smile lit up Mary's face. In that hour of deadly peril it was like a ray of glorious light leading the way through blackness, a smile sweet and gentle and unafraid; and slowly she crept toward Alan, dragging the rifle in one hand and holding the little pistol in the other, and from his feet she still smiled up at him through the dishevelment of her shining hair, and in a quiet, little voice that thrilled him, she said, "I am going to help you fight." <ANTIMG src="Images/334.jpg" width="60%" alt=""> Mary sobbed as the man she loved faced winged death. Nawadlook came creeping after her, dragging another rifle and bearing an apron heavy with the weight of cartridges. And above, through the darkened loophole of the attic window, Sokwenna's ferret eyes had caught the movement of a shadow in the gray mist, and his rifle sent its death-challenge once more to John Graham and his men. What followed struck a smile from Mary's lips, and a moaning sob rose from her breast as she watched the man she loved rise up before the open window to face the winged death that was again beating a tattoo against the log walls of the cabin. <hr style="width: 35%;"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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