In a moment:
"I told him I'd leave it to you," she whispered as it passed.
"My brave girl! My brave girl I I want you — of course I want you," he answered, low voiced, but vibrant.
A look of ineffable joy came over her face.
"He wants me!" she said feebly, bright-eyed, joy-flushed, to the physician standing at the bedside. "He's come back at last — and he wants me!"
A spasm of pain convulsed her.
The physician leaned over quickly, and turned to the table of instruments at his side.
The nurse gently took the man's arm and led him to the door. Even in her pain the woman's eyes lovingly followed him.
The door closed. A moment passed. It opened again, and the man's head appeared inside.
"Doctor!" he whispered softly.
The physician turned, looked, walked to the door. The man beckoned silently, and the physician went outside, closing the door quietly behind him.
"Well?" he questioned.
"Save the baby," the man replied.
The physician stared at him… turned and re-entered the room.
The long arm of God
by Ward Sterling
In a rock-bound gulch, half-buried under the sands of summer, covered beneath ten feet of snow in winter, six skeletons lie, grinning mockingly. In the hollow skulls of two are smooth, round holes. In one a tiny, leaden pellet leaps and bumps with each heave and groan of the sun-kissed ice in spring. The whitened ribs of two are seamed and scarred as by a knife. Upon the sixth there is no mark. Nor comes there any answering rattle when some loathsome reptile, scurrying from its lair amongst the rocks and crevices, jars against the whitened shell that once encased as foul a brain as e'er polluted God's green footstool. It lies far apart from the others, denied, even in death, the solace of their companionship.
It is of the tenant of that sixth grim remnant, gazing, hollow-eyed, toward the heavens it can never enter, that this story is written. The flesh that once covered his weather-bleached bones has long since been carried away by carrion birds; his malignant soul is now frying in hell — unless, by chance, the devil, fearing the corruption of his powers of darkness, has denied the spirit admittance.
He mocked God and spit upon His Commandments. And the long arm of God reached out and found him — even in the chill, cold arctic hell, where he had hidden himself away.
I
Lee was the first to die. They found him, a month after they had discovered that they were rich — cold and stiff, his face twisted into an indescribable grimace, as if he had died in awful agony. Yet there had been no outcry. Nor was there any mark upon his body to show how he had been struck down.
The six of them — Lee, the profane; Halligan, the religious; Mason, the student; Wentworth, ill-tempered and moody; Kelly, the hot-blooded Celt; and good-natured, plodding, old Drew — were from the same Mid-Western town. They had grown up together, attended the same school, soldiered in the same squad. The same girl had driven them to the land of long winters to seek their fortune. And, smarting under the same misfortune, they had been drawn together, forgetting, for the time, their differences, sharing one another's dangers, living out of a common purse, laughing at hardships — yet each praying that he might be the one upon whom Fortune's smile would fall — buoyed up by the memory of a beautiful girl far, far from their adopted home.
After a fashion, they were happy. They were filled with primitive vigor and pulsing with life. They lived constant romances and did not know it. For such is the way of the far countries. And the lure of the North had gripped their heartstrings.
They had been prospecting, without results, all summer, when they chanced upon the unmapped, blind canyon which was destined to be their burial place. Following the noisy little creek up the gulch to the spot where it bubbled from the side of the rocky wall which blocked the farther end of the canyon, between two gray, grim mountains, they decided to "hole in" for the winter.
There were signs of gold everywhere. A cabin, old and weatherbeaten — one of the unsolved mysteries of the ever-mysterious North — stood ready for their occupancy with a small amount of repairing. Near by were a dozen mounds — grim reminders of a tragic past. In the cabin were bags filled with nuggets, their coverings rotted away. The whole place breathed of mystery — of mystery and treasure untold. Wood was plentiful and game was abundant.
Halligan and Lee were sent back for supplies. The others divided their time between prospecting the gulch and putting in shape their shack — a four-roomed affair — for they intended spending the winter in comfort.
Two weeks after the return of the two, the partners awoke to the realization that they were rich. Before they could even estimate the extent of their find winter arrived, with its long, cold nights, burying the old cabin almost to the eaves under a mass of snow which filled the gulch, tying them up effectually for the remainder of the season.
There is no stronger test of friendship than the placing of strong, vigorous men for several long, weary months in enforced confinement. With little to do save eat and sleep, forced to gaze at each other day after day, they are apt to fall into a physical lethargy which eventually creates a nervous tension like nothing else in the world. Petty quarrels become serious matters. Molehills are magnified into mountains. They grow to hate the sight of each other — to become suspicious of what, under other circumstances, would not be noticed. And, when each looks upon his companions as his rivals for the hand of a beautiful woman, hell is bound to break loose sooner or later. It is as inevitable as fate.
II
When they found the grisly horror that was Lee, lying stark and stiff in his bunk, gazing, glassy-eyed, toward the ceiling, there was no thought of foul play. It was Halligan who, in straightening out the cold, clinched fingers, discovered the tiny thread of gray wool in the doubled-up fist and called the attention of the others to it.
Wentworth was the owner of the only gray shirt in the camp. The others wore khaki or blue. It had been a cold night and he had slept in it. Instantly all eyes were turned upon him, although no word was spoken.
He turned upon his silent accusers, his lips drawn back in a wolfish snarl.
"Damn it! If you think I done it, say so!" he growled. "If I killed him, how did I do it — and when? You, Halligan, slept in the same room with us."
Halligan shook his head sadly:
"When I went to bed, the two of you, and Kelly, were soldering that hole in the old coffee-pot. I went to sleep before either of you turned in."
Kelly looked at Halligan angrily, then cast a sympathetic glance at Wentworth.
"I'm sorry to say, boys, that I 'hit the hay' before the other two. I wish now that I hadn't, because I'm confident that if Lee was killed — and I don't think that he was — it wasn't Wentworth that done it. He's not that stripe. In fact," he hastened on, "none of the bunch is."
Wentworth snorted.
"Keep your blasted sympathy to yourself! I don't want it!" he growled.
Halligan shook his head mournfully.
"It's the visitation of God upon Lee for his blasphemy," he muttered. "I warned him against it many a time — poor boy."
They sat around all day discussing their-companion's sudden taking away — all but Wentworth. He sat alone in a corner, silently nursing his grievances. They had searched the body; there was not a mark upon it. The other four were loud in their statements that Lee must have died a natural death. But there was a feeling of coldness — an indescribable something that cast a pall over them all — a feeling toward their once-trusted comrade — a feeling that the long, lonely days of idleness and soundless nights of the past now magnified into an unspoken suspicion.