Read Ebook: Murder Point: A Tale of Keewatin by Dawson Coningsby

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He recalled the man whom he had known, so generous and open-hearted, who had walked with him at night beneath the London gas-lamps, sharing and comprehending those dreams and enthusiasms which others had derided, or compassionated as delusions of the mad. This was the man who had given him what might have been his chance, had he only been able to use it aright. Like a tawdry curtain drawn up at a Christmas pantomime on a dazzling transformation scene, so, at the memory, the veil of the present was instantly removed, revealing only the flashing splendours of past things, which lay behind. This same body which now crouched basely here before him had belonged to a hero once--to the man who, five long years since, had pushed on in spite of defeat, carrying with him by his courage his despairing companion over the deadly Skaguay trail. The Skaguay, where bodies of horses lay unburied, spreading pestilence abroad every hundred yards of the way; where the army of gold-seekers turning back was as great as the army pressing on; and those of the attack had momentarily to stand aside, so narrow was the path, for the wounded and spent of the retreat, who passed them by with ashen faces, some of them with death in their eyes, bidding them, "Turn back! Turn back! You will never get through alive."

Many a time when his shoulders were bruised and broken, and he ached in every limb, and his clothes were sodden with rain, which he knew must shortly become stiff as boards when night had fallen and it had begun to freeze, and perhaps another horse had fallen and been left beside the trail, he also would have joined the retreat right gladly, unashamed of his cowardice, had not Spurling picked up his load with a laugh and dragged him on. What a fine brave fellow he had been in those early Yukon days! Why, it was he who, when they had reached the summit of that heart-breaking pass, had rescued young Mordaunt. Jervis Mordaunt, with a single horse, had packed his entire outfit single-handed to the topmost point of the trail, and then, when the hardest part of his journey had been accomplished and his goal was already in sight, his horse had given out and died. When they had come up with him, his beast had been dead three days, and, because he could not afford a new one, he had been packing his stuff on his own narrow shoulders into Bennett, whence the start by water for Dawson had to be made--a hopeless task, for Mordaunt was not a strong fellow, but slim and extraordinarily girlish in frame. Many of the travellers who had already attained the summit were flinging away their outfits and turning back in panic, terrified by stories which they had heard of winter and starvation in the Klondike; those who still trudged doggedly forward were too selfishly preoccupied with visions of gold, and their own concerns, and fears lest the rivers and lakes should close up, to render him aid. Not so Spurling; in those days he was never too busy to lend an unfortunate a helping hand; besides, like most brave men, the thing which he valued highest was courage, and he was taken with the young chap's pluck. "I'm fairly broad," he had said, "and before the river freezes there's plenty of time for all three of us to get drowned. So look sharp, my girl, and hand your bundles up." From the first day he had nicknamed Mordaunt "The Girl," because he was so surpassingly modest and had no beard to shave. So he and Spurling had shouldered Mordaunt's burden, and had made him their partner, and had carried him through to the gold-fields alive.

Where was Jervis now? he wondered; then his thoughts returned to the panorama of that eventful journey. He remembered how in the mouth of the Windy Arm on Tagish Lake, when the sail swung round and sent him spinning overboard, he would most certainly have perished in those chill waters had not Spurling jumped in and held him up till the boat put back. It was Spurling's hand which had kept the boat steady in the boiling rapids of the White Horse, when he and Mordaunt had lost their nerve--yes, that same hand which was now plucking restlessly at the untrimmed beard which fringed that crafty, sullen face. How incredible it seemed that this body should contain the same man, and that the change should have taken place in five years! He contrasted that big-shouldered, song-singing fellow who had given them of his endless store of courage when their own was spent, compelling them to go through the mush ice at Five Fingers, and the drift ice at Fort Selkirk, and had landed them safely at Dawson almost against their will, the last boat through before the Klondike froze up, with this secretive hang-dog individual who slunk through an unpeopled wilderness, twisting his neck from side to side, as though he already felt the halter there--like a Seven Dials assassin, fearful of arrest. There he sat by the window, with eyes fixed uncannily on the west, watching for the follower whom he could not see, but only felt.

He turned round uncomfortably, feeling that Granger's eyes were upon him; then rose up abruptly, saying, "Ha, I was forgetting! My dogs must be fed."

Granger watched him go out, and was glad of relief from his presence. If anyone had come to him a week ago and had said, "Druce Spurling will be here this day or next," his joy would have surpassed all bounds. Now he realised that there is a worse evil than solitude--the compulsory companionship of a man who once was, and is no longer, your friend. "Ach!" he muttered shivering, "I feel as if I had been sitting with my feet in an open grave." Then remorsefully he added, "The poor chap's in trouble. He was good to me in days gone by: I'll do my best to help him. Perhaps that's the kind of offal that I appeared to Robert Pilgrim when I made my journey to God's Voice last January, and he threatened to shoot me; yet, God forbid that I ever looked like that. Maybe that which I seem to see in Spurling is only the reflected change in myself. Christ pity us lonely men!"

From the window he could see how Spurling was gathering his dogs around him, leading them past the Point northward to a bend where they could not be seen by a man approaching from up-river. What was the meaning of such precaution? Why had he been so urgently requested to help the one man in the world whom he was most likely to help without urging, since he had been his closest friend? Why had he been ordered to destroy the note immediately when read? And why had Spurling, whom he had thought to be in Klondike making his pile, or having taken advantage of the secret knowledge which he had unwisely shared with him, to be in Guiana, sailing up the Great Amana seeking El Dorado, travelled these thousands of miles by sea and land only to visit him here in Keewatin thus surlily? Was it to hide? Well, if that was his purpose, there wasn't much chance of his being followed, or if followed, found.

THE DEVIL IN THE KLONDIKE

Spurling, having returned from feeding his dogs, had reseated himself by the window, but he had not again spoken. When Granger had informed him that a meal was ready, and had called to him to come and partake, he had only shaken his head. When, however, it had been brought to him, he had eaten hungrily, bolting his food like a famished husky, yet never looking at what he ate, for his eyes were directed along the river-bed. He used neither fork nor spoon, carrying whatever was set before him hastily to his mouth in his hands. His whole attitude was one of hurry; he rested in haste, as if begrudging the moments which were lost from travel.

Had he been the foremost runner in some great race, who had fallen at the last lap, and, waiting to recover himself before making the final dash toward the tape, watched anxiously lest his next rival should round the bend, and surprise him before he was up on his feet again, he could not have been more tensely excited. His breath came in gasps and spasms; his body jerked and trembled even while he sat. He began to do things, and did not finish them. He opened his mouth to speak, and was silent. He half rose to his feet, and fell back again. He turned his head to look at Granger, then thought better of it, and continued staring into the west. Granger watched him, and wondered what might be the secret which he was hesitating to impart. Was his mind a blank through weariness? Was he arguing out some dreadful problem within himself? Or was he only mad?

What frail and isolated creatures we are!--when once our power of communicating thought is gone, though we breathe and move above the earth, we are more distant one from another than if we were truly dead; for, when a soul has totally forsaken its body, and the body has ceased to express, we, who live, can at least imagine that the thing departed sometimes returns and hovers within ourselves. To live and be silent is a remoter banishment from Life than the irrevocable exile decreed by Death.

Granger could now see that the change which he had noted in Spurling might quite well have been the work of a month or two months, and was due to trouble and neglect. The man was unwashed and unfed, and for many nights he had not slept. His eyes were ringed and bloodshot with fatigue, and with incipient snow-blindness. His cheeks were sunken and cadaverous with too much travel; his body was limp with over-work. Should the cause of his excitement be suddenly removed, he would collapse; it was nervous courage which upheld him. And there, despite all these alterations for the worse, he could still discern the old Spurling--the man whom he had loved. The brows retained their old frown of impudent defiance, and the mouth its good-humoured, reckless contempt. These had been overlaid by some baser passion, it was true; but they remained, showed through, and seemed recoverable. As he looked, the memory flashed through his mind of Spurling at his proudest--on that night at the Mascot dance-hall, when they had carried into Dawson City the news of the great bonanza they had struck at Drunkman's Shallows. He was standing on a table, surrounded by a group of miners, leading the singing, roaring out the doggerel chorus of a local mining ballad:

"Oh, we'll be there with our bags of gold When the Judgment trumpets blare, When the stars drop dead and the moon stands cold, Tell the angels we'll be there."

Ha, the power of the man and his consciousness of conquest!

Half to himself he began to hum the tune, beating time on the bare boards with his moccasined feet. In a moment Spurling had jumped up, "For God's sake, stop! I can't endure that," he cried. "Oh, to think of it, that I am come to this, and that it is like this we meet after all these years!" He covered his face with his hands, and, sinking weakly back in the chair, commenced to sob. Granger went towards him, and bending over him, flung an arm around his neck. For the moment the body before him was forgotten; the noble spirit of the man who had once stood by and helped him, was alone remembered. "Druce, tell me all," he said.

"I can't; you would shun me."

"Then why did you come if you could not trust me?"

"There was nowhere else to go--no other way of escape. They were all around me."

"Who were all around you?"

"Those who had come to take me to be hanged."

Granger gasped, and shrank aside. Then his worst conjecture was correct--it was as bad as that! murder had been done.

Spurling drew himself up suddenly, throwing back his hands and uncovering a face of ghastly paleness. One might have supposed that he had been the startled witness to the confession, instead of the man who had made it.

"What was that I said just now?" he asked. "You must not believe it. It is not true; I am tired and overstrained. They've hunted me so long that I myself have come almost to believe their squalid accusations. Don't look at me like that; I tell you I am innocent. . . . Oh well, perhaps I did fire the shot; but, if I did, it was an accident. I didn't know that the rifle had gone off until I saw him drop . . . and when I laid my hand on him to lift him up, I found that he was dead. Ugh! Then I hid him in a hole in the ice, and, because he had been my friend, I thought he would lie quiet forever there and never tell."

While these words had been in the saying, Granger had drawn nearer and nearer, so that now the two men stood face to face, almost touching, staring into one another's eyes. Who was this friend who had been shot? Could it have been Mordaunt? He seized hold of Spurling by the throat with both hands, and shook him violently, crying, "What was her name? Will you tell me that?"

Spurling wrenched himself free and his eyes blazed threateningly. "It wasn't a woman," he said; "thank God, I haven't sunk to that." Then more slowly, gazing fixedly on Granger as if to calculate how far it was safe to confide, "and he wasn't a friend of yours," he added.

"Druce," he said, speaking tremblingly, "it is terrible how far two men can drift apart in the passage of three short years."

"Then why did you leave me?" asked Spurling sulkily, not yet reassured of his safety, nor recovered from his rough usage.

"I left you because I feared that I might do the deed for which you are now in flight."

Spurling sat up astonished. "Lord!" he exclaimed, "have all men felt like that? I've often wondered why it was that you went away that night, leaving no message and abandoning your claim. Pray, who were you fearful of murdering?"

"Listen. If I tell you, it may make it easier for you to believe me, in spite of what has just happened, when I say that I sincerely want to help you."

He was interrupted. "I suppose you know," said Spurling with a shocking attempt at merriment, "that you are losing the thousand dollars which has been offered for my capture alive or dead? It's only fair to tell you that. If any man is to make a profit by my hanging, I'd rather that the man should be a friend."

It was as though one should make an indecent jest in the presence of a woman newly dead.

"I deserved that you should say that," Granger replied. "But listen to me this once, for we may never meet again; who knows, in this land of death? I want to explain to you how it was that I behaved as I did, and to ask your forgiveness."

"Then make haste," said Spurling, as he drew his chair nearer the window, and returned his gaze to the west.

Without the dark was falling, though the sky was still faintly stained with red. It was thus he sat in the unlighted room as they talked together through the night, a shadowy outline against the misty panes which never stirred, but stared far away across the frozen quiet of the land.

Granger spoke again. "You know with what hopes we set out on our journey to Dawson; how we went there not for the greed of gold, but for the sake of that other and more secret adventure which, as a boy, I promised my father I would undertake when I grew to be a man--an adventure which the Yukon gold could make possible and could purchase. That was my frame of mind throughout all the time that we were poor up there. That first winter in the Klondike, when we were nearly starved, and our money gave out because our grub was exhausted and the price of provisions ran so high, when we were thankful to work for almost any wages on Wrath's diggings if only we might get food and keep warm, we still kept our faith in one another and our purpose in sight. You'll remember how we used to talk together throughout those long dark days when, from November to February, we scarcely ever saw the sun and the thermometer sometimes stood at fifty below, and how we would plan for our great expedition to El Dorado, when our fortunes should be made, comforting ourselves for our present privations with thoughts of the land which Raleigh described. Those, despite their misery, were my best days--I had hope then. Little Mordaunt would sit beside us, with his face in his hands and his eyes opened wide with wonder, listening to what we said; when we had finished he would beg us to take him also, offering as his share, if he should be first to make his pile, to pay the way for all of us. It was then that we three made the compact which should be binding, that whenever our joint fortunes, whether owned by one alone, or two, or in equal proportions by all together, should amount to fifty thousand dollars, we would regard it as common to us all, and, throwing up our workings, would leave the Yukon for Guiana, in search of El Dorado. We were good comrades then, and did not calculate what ruin the avarice of gain may bring about in men.

"When spring came, we set out to seek the gold which should redeem us, which lay just underground. All that summer we travelled and found only pay-dirt or colours, and at times not even that, till we came to the Sleeping River and pitched our camp at what was afterwards Drunkman's Shallows. How discouraged we were! We talked of turning back, saying that nothing of worth had ever been found in the Sleeping River. We called ourselves fools for having wasted our time up there. Then, on what we had determined should be the last night of our camp, when we had made up our minds to return next day, Eric Petersen came by and joined us. He also had found nothing; worse still, had spent all he had, and, being down in the mouth, got drunk--not decently, but gloriously intoxicated. Somewhere about midnight, when, after twenty hours of shining, the sun had disappeared and the world was still bright as day, and we were all sleeping, he got up and went down to the river to bathe his aching head, and stumbled on the banks and, falling in, was nearly drowned. You heard him cry and, waking, ran down to the water's edge. As you stooped to pull him out, you saw that, where his foot had stumbled on the bank, it had kicked up a nugget. Then you roused us and, when we had prospected and found that gold was really there, we each staked a claim, and you an extra one as discoverer, and set off that same night on the run to register.

"It was on the evening of the day we recorded that you had your great time at the Mascot, leading the singing, and being toasted all round. It seemed to me I had reached El Dorado that night,--and now I know that I never shall. So, after the fun was over, we went back to work our claims, and toiled day and night till the river froze up. The stampede had followed us, and every yard of likely land was staked for miles below and above. My claim yielded next to nothing, and Mordaunt's soon pinched out; but your two were the richest on the Shallows.

"I was soon compelled to work for you for wages. Mordaunt, when he had taken ten thousand dollars out of his claim, agreed to do likewise. We should both have left you at that time and gone away to prospect afresh, had it not been for our early understanding that whatever we earned was owned conjointly. Just before the winter closed down upon us, we had taken out nearly fifty thousand dollars, the figure at which we had agreed to quit the Yukon; I had one, Mordaunt ten, and you had thirty-five thousand dollars--forty-six thousand in all. Mordaunt and I talked to you about selling out and starting on our greater quest, but you held us to the fifty-thousand limit, saying that six months' postponement more or less would make no difference, and that we had better have too much than too little capital in hand before our start was made. We yielded to your judgment inasmuch as you were the richest man, never suspecting that you were already contemplating going back on your bargain to share and share alike with us.

"But after the burning had commenced, and the winter had settled down for good, and the days had grown short and gloomy, we noticed a change in your manner--one of which you, perhaps, were not fully conscious. Your conversation became masterful and abrupt; you made us feel that we were your hired men, and were no longer partners in a future and nobler enterprise. Gradually the certainty dawned upon us that you had repudiated your compact, and did not include us in your plans. Gold for its own sake I had never cared about as you had; I only valued it for the power it had to forward me in the quest of which I had dreamed since I was a child--the following in my father's footsteps and discovering of the city of the Incas, and, perhaps, of my father himself.

"When I had seen you growing rich whilst I remained a poor man, I had felt no jealousy; for I trusted in the promise we had exchanged and relied on your honesty in keeping your word. But, when I had perceived your new intention, something went wrong inside my brain, so that I began to construe all your former good as bad. I thought that from the first you had never intended to keep your word, and had brought me into the Klondike to get me out of the way, so that, possessed of the secret information which I had given you, you might steal a march on me, and set out for El Dorado by yourself. Whether that was your purpose I do not know; but, for doubting you, you can scarcely blame me. So, day by day, as I descended the shaft to the bed-rock, and piled up billets of wood, and kindled them, throwing out the muck, drifting with the streak, sending up nuggets to the surface, and dirt which often averaged ten dollars to the pan, I said to myself, 'Every shovelful you dig out, and every fire you light, and every billet you stack, is helping Spurling to betray you the earlier.'

"At first I would not believe my own judgment, but drove my anger down by replying, 'He is no traitor; he is my friend.' But at night when I came up, and you spoke to me pityingly about my hard luck and your own increasing wealth, I knew what you meant. Mordaunt didn't seem to mind; he had ten thousand dollars of his own, so he only said, 'Give him time. He's all right. He'll remember and come round. His head's turned for the moment by his fortune and he's lost his standards of what is just. I daresay if this happened to you or me, we should have been as bad.'

"But that did not comfort me much, for I thought, 'A man who can betray and lie to you once, can always lie and betray.' I could not sleep at night for thinking about it and I brooded over it all the day; there was ever before my eyes the vision of you, sailing up the Great Amana without me.

"If nothing else had happened and it had remained at that, I suppose I should have finished my winter's contract with you and have gone out again in the spring, either with Mordaunt or alone, prospecting for myself. As it was, I began to argue with myself. 'What better right has Spurling to this gold than I?' I said. 'If I had chosen this claim, as I might have done, all the wealth which is now his would have been mine. Had that been the case, I should have held to my bargain and have dealt squarely by him. Since he refuses to allow me the share which he promised me, I have a right to take it.'

"You know what followed, how I hid some nuggets in my shirt, and you accused me and discovered them. You called me a thief, and threatened to expose me to the law of the mining camp. I told you that, since we had made that agreement to share conjointly whatever we found, I had as big a right to take charge of some of the gold as you yourself. Then you laughed in my face and struck me, asking if that was the usual way in which a labourer spoke to his employer. That blow drove me mad. I made no reply, for I had become suddenly crafty; I awaited a revenge that was certain and from which there could be no rebound. From that day forward the lust to kill was upon me; wherever I looked I saw you dead, and was glad. When the Northern Lights shot up they seemed to me, instead of green or yellow, to be always crimson, the bloodcolour. When they crept and rustled through the snow along the mountain heights, I fancied that they were a band of murderers who fled from their crime, and turned, and beckoned, and pointed to me, and whispered 'Come.' As my imagination wrought within me I grew silent; not even Mordaunt could rouse me. But he guessed what was happening, and would often come to me and say, 'Don't get down-hearted. Whatever Spurling does, I still hold to my promise. You and I are partners with a common fund. We have eleven thousand dollars already, so cheer up.'

"But it wasn't envy of your wealth had driven me mad; it was fear lest you should go off and leave me behind, and should get to Guiana and to El Dorado first. I couldn't shake off my hallucination however much I tried--which wasn't much; always and everywhere I could see you dead. You know that the Klondike with its few hours of winter daylight, its interminable nights, its pale-green moon which seems to shine forever in a steely cloudless sky, and its three long months when men rarely see the sun, is not a much better place than Keewatin in which to heal a crippled mind. So, with the passage of time, there was worse to come.

"At last he answered, 'You called me.'

"'What have you come for?' I questioned.

"'To murder Spurling,' he replied.

"Then in a choking whisper I muttered, 'Who are you?'

"And he answered me, 'Your baser self.'

"I looked for a way of escape, but he stood between me and the mouth of the shaft; to get out I would have had to pass him. I tried to make him speak with me again that I might draw him aside, and so might slip past him and get above ground; but he refused to stir. Then I grew fascinated, and went near him, and peered into his face. He was like me, yet unlike; he was more evil--what I might become at my worst. He was to me what you were, when you just now arrived, to the man whom I loved in London, and who saved my life in Tagish Lake. Having studied his body and his face I loathed him, and drew myself away to the farthest hiding-place. There I crouched beside the gold streak for ten hours until the last glow of fire had died out, and I was left in darkness. Then, though I could not see him, I knew that he was there.

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