The Greatest Works of James Oliver Curwood (Illustrated Edition). James Oliver Curwood

my God, won't you hurry? Won't you go?"

      Howland had stopped. From the blackness of the corridor there came the beat of heavy fists on the door and the rage of a thundering voice demanding admittance. From out in the night it was answered by the sharp barking of a dog and the shout of a second voice.

      "Why should I go?" he asked. "I told you a few moments ago that I had come prepared to fight, Meleese. I shall stay--and fight!"

      "Please--please go!" she sobbed, striving to pull him nearer to the window. "You can get away in the storm. The snow will cover your trail. If you stay they will kill you--kill you--"

      "I prefer to fight and be killed rather than to run away without you," he interrupted. "If you will go--"

      She crushed herself against his breast.

      "I can't go--now--this way--" she urged. "But I will come to you. I promise that--I will come to you." For an instant her hands clasped his face. "Will you go--if I promise you that?"

      "You swear that you will follow me--that you will come down to the Wekusko? My God, are you telling me the truth, Meleese?"

      "Yes, yes, I will come to you--if you go now." She broke from him and he heard her fumbling at the window. "I will come--I will come--but not to Wekusko. They will follow you there. Go back to Prince Albert--to the hotel where I looked at you through the window. I will come there--sometime--as soon as I can--"

      A blast of cold air swept into his face. He had thrust his revolver into its holster and now again for an instant he held Meleese close in his arms.

      "You will be my wife?" he whispered.

      He felt her throbbing against him. Suddenly her arms tightened around his neck.

      "Yes, if you want me then--if you want me after you know what I am. Now, go--please, please go!"

      He pulled himself through the window, hanging for a last moment to the ledge.

      "If you fail to come--within a month--I shall return," he said.

      Her hands were at his face again. Once more, as on the trail at Le Pas, he felt the sweet pressure of her lips.

      "I will come," she whispered.

      Her hands thrust him back and he was forced to drop to the snow below. Scarcely had his feet touched when there sounded the fierce yelp of a dog close to him, and as he darted away into the smother of the storm the brute followed at his heels, barking excitedly in the manner of the mongrel curs that had found their way up from the South. Between the dog's alarm and the loud outcry of men there was barely time in which to draw a breath. From the stair platform came a rapid fusillade of rifle shots that sang through the air above Howland's head, and mingled with the fire was a hoarse voice urging on the cur that followed within a leap of his heels.

      The presence of the dog filled the engineer with a fear that he had not anticipated. Not for an instant did the brute give slack to his tongue as they raced through the night, and Howland knew now that the storm and the darkness were of little avail in his race for life. There was but one chance, and he determined to take it. Gradually he slackened his pace, drawing and cocking his revolver; then he turned suddenly to confront the yelping Nemesis behind him. Three times he fired in quick succession at a moving blot in the snow-gloom, and there went up from that blot a wailing cry that he knew was caused by the deep bite of lead.

      Again he plunged on, a muffled shout of defiance on his lips. Never had the fire of battle raged in his veins as now. Back in the window, listening in terror, praying for him, was Meleese. The knowledge that she was there, that at last he had won her and was fighting for her, stirred him with a joy that was next to madness. Nothing could stop him now. He loaded his revolver as he ran, slackening his pace as he covered greater distance, for he knew that in the storm his trail could be followed scarcely faster than a walk.

      He gave no thought to Jean Croisset, bound hand and foot in the little cabin on the mountain. Even as he had clung to the window for that last moment it had occurred to him that it would be folly to return to the Frenchman. Meleese had promised to come to him, and he believed her, and for that reason Jean was no longer of use to him. Alone he would lose himself in that wilderness, alone work his way into the South, trusting to his revolver for food, and to his compass and the matches in his pocket for life. There would be no sledge-trail for his enemies to follow, no treachery to fear. It would take a thousand men to find him after the night's storm had covered up his retreat, and if one should find him they two would be alone to fight it out.

      For a moment he stopped to listen and stare futilely into the blackness behind him. When he turned to go on his heart stood still. A shadow had loomed out of the night half a dozen paces ahead of him, and before he could raise his revolver the shadow was lightened by a sharp flash of fire. Howland staggered back, his fingers loosening their grip on his pistol, and as he crumpled down into the snow he heard over him the hoarse voice that had urged on the dog. After that there was a space of silence, of black chaos in which he neither reasoned nor lived, and when there came to him faintly the sound of other voices. Finally all of them were lost in one--a moaning, sobbing voice that was calling his name again and again, a voice that seemed to reach to him from out of an infinity of distance, and that he knew was the voice of Meleese. He strove to speak, to lift his arms, but his tongue was as lead, his arms as though fettered with steel bands.

      The voice died away. He lived through a cycle of speechless, painless night into which finally a gleam of dawn returned. He felt as if years were passing in his efforts to move, to lift himself out of chaos. But at last he won. His eyes opened, he raised himself. His first sensation was that he was no longer in the snow and that the storm was not beating into his face. Instead there encompassed him a damp dungeon-like chill. Everywhere there was blackness--everywhere except in one spot, where a little yellow eye of fire watched him and blinked at him. At first he thought that the eye must be miles and miles away. But it came quickly nearer--and still nearer--until at last he knew that it was a candle burning with the silence of a death taper a yard or two beyond his feet.

CHAPTER XVI

      JEAN'S STORY

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      It was the candle-light that dragged Howland quickly back into consciousness and pain. He knew that he was no longer in the snow. His fingers dug into damp earth as he made an effort to raise himself, and with that effort it seemed as though a red-hot knife had cleft him from the top of his skull to his chest. The agony of that instant's pain drew a sharp cry from him and he clutched both hands to his head, waiting and fearing. It did not come again and he sat up. A hundred candles danced and blinked before him like so many taunting eyes and turned him dizzy with a sickening nausea. One by one the lights faded away after that until there was left only the steady glow of the real candle.

      The fingers of Howland's right hand were sticky when he drew them away from his head, and he shivered. The tongue of flame leaping out of the night, the thunderous report, the deluge of fire that had filled his brain, all bore their meaning for him now. It had been a close call, so close that shivering chills ran up and down his spine as he struggled little by little to lift himself to his knees. His enemy's shot had grazed his head. A quarter of an inch more, an eighth of an inch even, and there would have been no awakening. He closed his eyes for a few moments, and when he opened them his vision had gained distance. About him he made out indistinctly the black encompassing walls of his prison.

      It seemed an interminable time before he could rise and stand on his feet and reach the candle. Slowly he felt his way along the wall until he came to a low, heavy door, barred from the outside, and just beyond this door he found a narrow aperture cut through the decaying logs. It was a yard in length and barely wide enough for him to thrust through an arm. Three more of these narrow slits in his prison walls he found before he came back again to the door. They reminded him of the hole through which he had looked out on the plague-stricken cabin at the Maison de Mort Rouge, and he guessed that through them came what little fresh air found its way into the dungeon.

      Near the table on which