Wolf Breed Page 6

  CHAPTER VI

  THE PROMISE OF A RAINBOW

  For a week Dave Drennen lay upon the bunk in the one room dugout whichhad been home for him during the winter. Stubborn and sullen andsilent at first, snarling his anger as sufficient strength came backinto him, he refused the aid which the Settlement, now keenlysolicitous, offered. He knew why the men who had not spoken to him twoweeks ago sought to befriend him now. He knew that the swift change ofattitude was due to nothing in the world but to a fear that he mightdie without disclosing his golden secret.

  "And I am of half a mind to die," he told the last man to trouble him;"just to shame Kootanie George, to hang Ernestine Dumont and to drive ahundred gold seekers mad."

  During the week a boy from Joe's Lunch Counter brought him his mealsand gave him the scant attention he demanded. The boy went away withmoney in his pockets and with tales to tell of a man like a woundedbull moose. Always there were eager hands to detain him, eager tonguesto ask if Drennen had let anything drop. Always the same answer, ashake of the head; he had learned nothing.

  The day after the affair at Pere Marquette's had seen MacLeod'sSettlement empty of men. Each one following his own hope and fancythey had gone into the mountains, heading toward the north as Drennenhad headed two weeks before, some following the main trail for a matterof many miles, others breaking off to right or to left at temptingcross-trails, hastening feverishly, dreaming dreams and finding rudeawakenings. The snows were melting everywhere upon the slopes, thedirty waters running down the trails making an ooze at midday whichsucked up and destroyed the tracks of the men who travelled over it inthe crisp early mornings.

  There was no sign to tell whether Drennen had gone straight on duringthe seven days he might have been pushing away from the camp and hadmade his strike at the end of them, or whether he had turned offsomewhere hardly out of sight of the handful of shacks markingMacLeod's Settlement. No sign to tell that the golden vein or pocketlay within shouting distance from the Settlement or fifty, seventy-fivemiles removed. And Drennen, lying on his back upon his hard bunk,stared up at the blackened beams across his ceiling and smiled hishard, bitter smile as he pictured the frantic, fruitless quest.

  Sefton, the man with the coppery Vandyke beard, thin-jawed and withrestless eyes, had given him certain rude help at Marquette's and hadbeen among the first the following day to offer aid. Drennen dismissedhim briefly, offering to pay for what he had already done but saying hehad no further need of clumsy fingers fooling with his hurt. Seftonfavoured him with a keen scrutiny from the door, hesitated, shruggedhis thin shoulders and went away. Drennen wondered if the girl, whoseemed in the habit of ordering people around, had sent him.

  At the end of the week Drennen was about again. He had kept his woundclean with the antiseptic solutions to be obtained from the store andunder its bandages it was healing. He found that he was weaker than hehad supposed but with a grunt drove his lax muscles to stiffen and obeyhis will. From the door he came back, found a broken bit of mirror andlooked curiously at the face reflected in it. No beautiful sight, hetold himself grimly. It was haggard, drawn and wan. A beard threeweeks old, the black of it shot through here and there with whitehairs, made the stern face uncouth.

  "I look a savage," he told himself disgustedly, tossing the glass tothe cluttered table. Then, with a grim tightening of the lips, "Andwhy not?"

  He made his way slowly, his side paining him no little, to Joe's LunchCounter. It was late afternoon and the street was deserted. A gleamof satisfaction showed fleetingly in his eyes; he knew why the streetwas deserted and the knowledge pleased him.

  None of the Settlement was in Joe's restaurant, but the presence of thetwo strangers who had come with the girl saved it from utter desertion.They were finishing a light meal as Drennen entered and looked up athim curiously. Drennen saw a quick glance interchanged. He knew themeaning of this, too, knew that the story of his strike had gone itsway to them, that because of those nuggets which even now weighted hispocket he was a marked man, a man to be reckoned with, to be watched,to be followed, to be fawned upon if possible. He frowned at Sefton'snod and took his place at the lunch counter.

  Presently the younger of the two, Captain Sefton's companion, got upand came to Drennen's side, offering his hand.

  "I am glad to see you around again," he said, pleasantly.

  Drennen did not look toward him.

  "Some more coffee, Joe," he said shortly.

  The young fellow stared at him a moment, a quick retort upon his lips.It was checked however by Sefton saying quickly:

  "Come on, Lemarc. It's none of your funeral if a man wants to be leftalone. Let's go find Ygerne."

  Ygerne. So that was her name, Drennen thought as he stirred twoheaping spoons of sugar into his coffee and out of the corner of hiseye watched the two men go out. Well, what was the difference? Onename would do as well as another and she was an adventuress like therest of them in this land of hard trails. Else why should she be hereat all, and with men like Lemarc and Sefton? Had he not distrusted allmen by sweeping rule these two at least he would have distrusted forthe craft in their eyes.

  He drank his second cup of coffee, stuffed his old pipe full of coarsetobacco and went outside. Sefton and Lemarc had passed out of sight.Drennen hesitated just a second, pausing at the door. He was pitifullyweak. He supposed that the thing for him to do was to crawl back tohis bunk for the remainder of the day and the long night to follow. Heclamped his pipe stem hard between his teeth. He'd do nothing of thekind. Did strength, any more than anything else in the world, come toa man who lay on his back and waited for it? He needed exercise.

  So he strolled down through the quiet Settlement, turned into the trailwhich leads upward along old Ironhead's flank, driving his bodymercilessly to the labour of the climb. There was a spot he knew wherehe could sit and look down across the valley and from which far outsomewhere to north or south he might see fools seeking for the gold hehad found. It was a little cup set in the side of the mountain, a tinyvalley at once beautiful and aloof, and he had not been here since lastfall. In it he could rest unmolested, unwatched.

  During the day there had been showers; now the sun was out warmly whilehere and there the sky was hidden by clouds and in places he could seethe little mists shaken downward through the bright air. Warm rainswould mean a quickened thaw, open trails and swifter travel. In a waya propitious season was making it up to him for the time he was losingin idleness with a hole in his side.

  An odd incident occurred that afternoon. Drennen, hard man as he was,Inured to the heavy shocks of a life full of them, felt this littlething strangely. He was resting, sitting upon a great boulder under apine tree. The cup-like valley, or depressed plateau, lay at his left,himself upon an extreme rim of it. As he brooded he noted idly how thesunshine was busied with the vapour filled air, building of it atriumphant arch, gloriously coloured. His mood was not for brightnessand yet, albeit with but half consciousness, he watched. Did a man whohas followed the beck of hope of gold ever see a rainbow withoutwondering what treasure lay at the far end of the radiant promise? So,idly, Dave Drennen now.

  At first just broken bits of colour. Then slowly the bits merged intoone and the arc completed, the far end seeming to rest upon the furtherrim of the level open space. It seemed a tangible thing, not avisioned nothing born of nothingness and to perish utterly in atwinkling.

  "A promise that is a lie," he said to himself bitterly. "Like thepromises of men."

  And then . . . to his startled fancies she had come into being like therainbow, from nothingness . . . where the foot of the arch hadappeared to rest stood the girl, Ygerne. A quarter of a mile betweenDrennen sitting here and her standing there, a stretch of boulderstrewn mountain side separating them, God's covenant joining them.Drennen stiffened, started to his feet as though he had looked uponmagic. At the foot of the rainbow not just gold . . . gold he had inplenty now . . . but a woman . . .


  He laughed his old ugly laugh and settled back upon his rock, his eyesjerked away from her, sent back down the slope of the mountain to thegreen fringe of the Little MacLeod. He knew that his senses hadtricked him as one's senses are so prone to do; that she had merelystepped into sight from behind a shoulder of blackened cliff; that themost brilliantly coloured rainbow is just so much sunlight and water.And he knew, too, that she would have to pass close to him on her wayback to the Settlement unless she went to considerable effort to avoidhim.

  He saw her shadow upon a patch of snow in the trail where the rockprotected it. He did not turn his head. He heard her step, knew whenit had stopped and her shadow had grown motionless. She was not tenpaces from him.

  Stubbornly he ignored the silent challenge of her pausing. With slopeshoulders he sat motionless upon his rock, his face turned toward theLittle MacLeod, his freshly relighted pipe going calmly. Yet he wasaware, both from the faint sound of her tread upon the soft ground andfrom her shadow, cast athwart the path, that she had come on anothercouple of steps, that she had stopped again, that her gaze was now nodoubt concerned with his profile. He did not seek to make it the lessharsh, to soften the expression of bitterness and uncouth hardnesswhich his bit of a mirror had shown him in the dugout. He found thatwithout turning to see he could remember just what her eyes lookedlike. And he had seen them only once and that when his chief concernwas a bullet hole in his side.

  While Drennen drew five or six slow puffs at his pipe neither he northe girl moved. Then again she drew a pace nearer, again stopped. Hesent his eyes stubbornly up and down the willow fringed banks of theLittle MacLeod. His thought, used to obeying that thing apart, hiswill, concerned itself with the question of just where the gold seekerswere driving their fools' search for his gold.

  Stubbornness in the man had met a stubbornness no less in the girl.Though his attitude might not be misread she refused to heed it. Hehad half expected her to go on, and was idly looking for a shrug of theshadow's shoulders and then a straightening of them as she went past;he half expected her to address him with some commonplace remark. Hehad not thought to have her stand there and laugh at him.