XXII

THE BLIZZARD

Garth had no conscious design in running; his muscles merely reacted in obedience to the grinding tumult in his brain. His eardrums rang with the fancied sound of Natalie's cries; and his eyeb.a.l.l.s were seared with the picture of her shrinking in the brutal hands of Grylls. As he crashed through the wood, the little branches whipped his face unmercifully; and the spiny shoots of the jackpines tore his clothes. He ran full tilt into unyielding obstacles; and was flung aside, unconscious of the shock.

He instinctively sought the other camp. He found it deserted; the tent gone; the door of the empty cabin swinging idly in the wind. He came to a stop then; and his arms dropped to his sides: without knowledge of the direction they had taken; and without the craft to follow their tracks in the gra.s.s, in his helplessness he hovered on the brink of sheer madness. He was sharply called back to himself by the sound of a faint groan from the edge of the cut-bank. A tinge of gray had by this time been woven into the unrelieved blackness. Running toward the sound, he found a human form p.r.o.ne in the gra.s.s; and he saw it was a woman lying on her face. Grasping her shoulders, he rolled her over. It was Rina.

A tiny hope sprang in his breast. Here at last was a clue.

"Get up!" he said roughly.

She made no answer. From her limpness, and her cold, moist hands, Garth apprehended that she was physically sick. Partly raising her, he poured part of the contents of his flask down her throat. She choked, and turned her head away.

"Let me be!" she murmured. "Let me die!"

The wildness in Garth's veins subsided. Here he had something tangible to work upon; and his conscious brain resumed operations; prompting him at first like a small, strange voice at an immense distance.

"Tell me what happened!" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "If they have wronged you, too, help me to find them, and we'll pay them off together!"

"No! I want die!" whispered Rina in a voice as dull and hopeless as the sound of all-day rain in the gra.s.s. "I say I kill myself. He laugh. He see me tak' bad medicine. He don' care. I fall down. He leave me. I t'ink I die then. I ver' glad. But I tak' too much; and it only mak' my stomach sick. Bam-by I try to go to lake and jomp in--but my head go off!"

In spite of her unwillingness, Garth forced more of the stimulant down her throat. Presently she was able to sit up. She bowed her back, and buried her face in her crossed arms.

"Ride with me after them!" urged Garth. "They have less than an hour's start! We will overtake them at their first camp. Rouse yourself!"

But Rina only shook her head; and continued to murmur: "He want me die!

He glad I die!"

Garth's desperate need brought craft to his aid. "Very well," he said coolly. "I shoot him on sight! Mabyn goes first!"

Rina, touched home, raised an agitated face. "No! No!" she said tremblingly. "Grylls, him took her--not 'Erbe't!"

"No matter!" he said, feigning to leave her. "Mabyn dies like a dog--unless you come with me."

Rina struggled to her knees, and clutched at him. "Wait a minute!" she stammered.

"Come with me, and I promise you his life, if I can save it," he urged.

"I will give it to you!"

She attempted to rise; and he lifted her. She stood swaying dizzily, clinging to his arm for support.

"I come," she said faintly at last. "Tak' me to the water, then go get your horses. When you come back I ride with you."

She stopped in the cabin, and got an herb she knew of to restore her.

Garth then carried her down the hill, and laying her at the brink of the water, where she could drink and bathe her face, he hastened back to his own shack.

It was now light enough to see a way through the wood. A spectral mist hung suspended a few feet over the lake; beneath it the water was like a steel cuira.s.s, reflecting bordering foliage as black as jet. Charley had gone for the horses as a matter of course and was even now landing them.

The boy's whilom rosy cheeks were as white as the mist; and his face was twisted with pain. His jaw was set doggedly; and he worked ahead without question or comment.

No orders were required; they laboured instinctively. Saddles were carried out, and flung on the dripping beasts; and while Charley girthed them, Garth rolled the blankets, and made three bundles of grub, as heavy as he dared ask each horse to carry, in addition to his rider.

Natalie's little rifle he gave to Charley; the second Winchester had been won back in the raid, and the twenty-two was the only other weapon they possessed. In twenty minutes they were ready. Securing the door of the hut against the entrance of animals, they hastened to pick up Rina.

They found her waiting, outwardly collected; her old walled, sullen self--but in the early light her skin showed a deathly, yellowish gray.

Refusing any a.s.sistance, she climbed into the empty saddle without comment; and mutely pointed the way over the hills to the west. Garth lingered to affix a note to the door of the shack for those they expected to follow.

As he caught up to them again, he overlooked his little party with the eye of a commander. It was not a hopeful view: three wretched, half-fed beasts he had, complaining at the very start under their loads; and for his aids an injured boy and a sick girl; with one first-cla.s.s weapon and a toy among the three of them. This was all he had with which to meet and overcome Grylls's strong and well-provided party. The odds were so preposterous, he put the thought out of his head with a shrug. At the last there is a moment when the hard-pressed commander must wall up his brain; and let the tide of his blood carry him. The daylight revealed Garth's face gaunt and sunken; his lips a grim stroke of red; and his eyes contracted to two icy points.

As they climbed the hill Rina said: "They got fourteen horse. Nick Grylls bring nine, three yours, and two cayuse 'Erbe't's."

At the top she halted them, while she walked her horse back and forth, searching the gra.s.s. Garth's eyes meanwhile swept the wide, brown, undulating sea, seeking in the hollows and the coppices for any sign of motion. But the plain was as empty of life as the gray sky.

Rina rejoined him. "They break up so we can't see them so good," she said in her indifferent way. "Seven horse go by the edge of the coulee, southwest. Five horse go west. Two horse go northwest. Bam-by I t'ink they come together."

"What horse was _she_ on?" Garth demanded.

"Nick Grylls's big roan," she answered. "They mak' a bag for her to sit in. She sit one side; Mary Co-que-wasa sit the other."

"Find the roan's tracks," ordered Garth.

Rina shook her head. "I never follow that horse," she said.

"Find the heaviest tracks then!"

She obediently wheeled her horse; and searched the turf again; riding around them in wide fanlike sweeps, while Garth waited with a deadly patience. At last she struck off to the northwest, calling to them, and Garth and Charley spurred after.

"'Erbe't, Mary and her, go this way," she said briefly, as they came up.

"Nick Grylls take six horse west, and Xavier take four by coulee."

"If we can overtake her before the others come up!" muttered Garth.

Rina, looking at their horses, shrugged significantly.

For half an hour they loped over the prairie without speech. A chill, damp wind stung their faces. The immense and empty plain with its cold shadows wore an ominous look under the lowering sky; a look that clutched at the breast.

"I t'ink it snow bam-by," Rina had said.

It would need only snow to complete their difficulties. Garth ground his teeth; and urged his horse afresh up every little rise, eagerly searching the expanse ahead from the top. A glance at last at the stretched nostrils and wet flanks of their mounts told him plainly such a pace would be slowest in the end. Hardest of all to bear was the necessity of going slowly.

"What do you know of their plans?" he demanded of Rina.

She shook her head. "They not tell me moch," she said. "They t'ink I too friendly for you!"

Little by little as they rode, the story was drawn painfully out. "Soon as Charley come to you, they get ready right away," said Rina. "They catch all horses, and keep them up coulee, and pack everyt'ing. Mary Co-que-wasa, her go down and watch your house all the time, for good chance to tak' _her_. When you go out she mak' little fire under the bank for signal; and Nick Grylls and 'Erbe't and Xavier, them all go down. They not tak' me."

Garth cursed himself to think how he had played directly into their hands.