He glared defiance and implacable hate, merged, however, with a certain respect. But still he rasped out, between panting breaths:
“You’ve got nothing—on me—Gunson—you think—you’re wise, don’t you?”
“You’ve—got it—on yourself,” repeated Gunson. Then he leaned over the fallen man, his words, slow, bitter, dripping with the still acid of a corrosive vengeance:
“You’re slick, Masterman—but—you overlooked one thing... one little thing... you’re in, bo—up to your neck — heels over head, I’ll say.” He barked a short, grim laugh. “I had the motive — all I needed was a clue—and I got it — at No. 32, while I was watching the firemen coming out. You croaked Darragh because he’d seen—this—”
With his free hand he jerked from his pocket the purchase he had made at Spanish Joe’s, thrusting it before Masterman—a sinister exhibit indeed—the “ghost” of Darragh’s perfervid dreams — a gas mask of the French type, long-snouted like a boar, terrifying, indeed, as an accessory to silent halls, dim night, and alcoholic imaginations.
“But that isn’t all, Masterman,” continued the detective. “It’s not a circumstance to this—thing you’ve fastened on — yourself.”
He stooped, his voice rising to a note of triumph:
“You’re in, Masterman — ankle-deep!” he cried, bending swiftly, and jerking the half-laced shoe from the foot of the murderer.
“Yellow!” he exulted, “and that’s your brand, you shillaber.”
For, as acid acts on litmus, so chlorine impregnates with its revealing color change the substances which it touches.
Across and across, where the blue sock of the murderer came above the protection of the shoe, there shone the stigma of an ineffaceable guilt: the ineradicable, inescapable, indelible proof, even as Gunson had seen it on the stockings of the firemen—the revealed and all-revealing stain: a broad band of staring yellow!
The Murder at Lost Creek
by Robert E. Hewes
I
Strange things take place in the north country, m’sieu, but I have known none more strange, or terrible, than what happened that night in the lonely cabin on Lost Creek, — the night the wind wolves danced. Ah, m’sieu, even now I can see the way that man lay there, the knife blade gleaming—what of it was not buried in his heart, and feel the cold fear that crept down my back. Ugh! But I should not dare tell this story to even you, m’sieu, was I not very sure you could never find the place.
It was a bitter night, m’sieu, that I was caught in a storm up in the Height-of-Land country. Even the oldest woodsman is fooled sometimes, and the storm came up even quicker than I had expected, catching me many miles from my cabin.
I thought I knew my trap line well, but after dark, when the snow devils build strange shapes out of the drifts, then tear them down again like children knock over play houses to make something else, familiar landmarks look queer and unnatural.
I had no compass and the stars were smothered by the clouds that shook loose the snow that floated down, swirling, steady, suffocating, filling up trails and leavening valleys until the northland was one great white plain with no end and no beginning.
Ah, m’sieu, for long hours I floundered helplessly in that night of terrible whiteness, utterly bewildered. The soft snow underfoot, clinging in the manner of new fallen flakes, seemed to be tugging at my boots, striving to pull me down. And the hard sleet pellets that flew through the air in a straight line stung my eyes till I was almost blinded and cut my face till the blood came. Then the frost crept in and seamed my, skin with great, aching cracks.
It is a terrible thing to be lost in the north country in a storm such as raced in a mad dance that night. The cold was a cruel, searching thing, that crept into one’s bones and sucked at the marrow.
I stumbled along blindly, hour after hour, and always that terrible cold clawed at my vitals and always I could hear the wind devils howling like hungry wolves, eager for their prey. My throat burned from thirst, and each time I thrust a handful of snow in my mouth it was dry like chalk dust and I blew it out still unmoistened.
I knew I was far off my trap line, wandering somewhere far into the lonely north, but I was even farther than I thought. Many times I fell, and each time it was longer before I got up. As I lay in the snow a strange warmth would creep over me and I grew drowsy — why not sleeps I thought; after all, what did it matter? And I knew that soon I should fall and not rise again. Then, with the sleep imps tugging at my eyelids until I felt I could no longer resist them, I saw a light.
I tried to cry out for joy, but my throat was so parched I could utter no sound.
I could see that the light was in a little creek, some trapper’s cabin, I thought, and stumbled toward it madly, rubbing my eyes with my fists to keep them open. Twice the light vanished, and each time tears came to my eyes, while I sobbed like a child. Then, each time, a lull in the whirling world of whiteness showed it again. I thought I should never reach it, and was sobbing from despair when suddenly I saw a shadow loom before me and I fell against a door.
The next moment there was a sudden blaze of light that blinded me and a blast of warm air against my face.
I was conscious of falling forward on a hard floor, and of a woman’s frightened cry. Then all was black.
II
When I regained consciousness my first feeling was of pain, white-hot, searing pain that darted across my face like little streaks of fire. I moved and my whole body responded with a great swell of torture. I could not help but cry out from it, and I heard a quick stir at the other side of the room where I lay in a bunk.
I turned my eyes, and saw a cabin typical of the trapper’s shacks scattered throughout the north country, with a rifle over the fireplace where pine sticks blazed, and great bunches of furs hanging on the walls; rich, glossy pelts of marten and fox. Then the girl bent over me.
M’sieu, she was beautiful. She was young, not more than twenty, I thought, and her skin was white like new milk shaded as by rich cream from wind and sun. Her lips I should have sworn were painted had not the cut of her belted, dress and the way her black hair was piled loose on her head told me here was a girl who knew little of civilization. She was a wild thing of the woods, sweet and beautiful like the flowers. The hand she laid on my head was soft and cool, and, m’sieu, I swear it, under that touch the pain left as snow melts before the breath of the Chinook in the spring.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“You are safe,” she half whispered the words, and threw a nervous glance over her shoulder toward the door.
Then she smiled, but still I saw fear in her eyes.
She brought me hot broth then, and scalding tea, that loosened a little the grip of the frost devils in my body and set the blood flowing more freely. But still I could not get up, for my legs were swollen and aching with the rheumatism in them. The cold of the north does not easily let go its grip.
That day I lay and watched the girl move about the cabin working, cooking over the small stove in one corner, sewing, or turning drying pelts that hung on the walls. But always she seemed listening, and at each sound at the door she started nervously.
Often she would press her face to the window glass, striving to pierce the terrible murky whiteness outside. For the storm still tore on in its mad dance, and made the day almost dark as night so that the lamp had to be kept burning. And as I lay there watching the girl, who every now and then threw a half-fearful glance at me, or staring at the smoked rafters of the roof, I had a feeling that here in this cabin I had stumbled on some mystery of the north—which hides so much that is terrible and tragic.