Snow-Blind

CHAPTER VII

“Did they see you?” Pete demanded anxiously.

“I don’t think so.” Hugh was breathing fast; he had evidently fled across the snow at top speed.

“Get in, then, quick—out of sight.” Pete was already tearing up boards above that long-waiting place of hiding. Hugh was about to step down into it when he glanced up and saw Sylvie. She was standing as the unseeing stand in moments of frightened bewilderment, her hands clasped, her head turning from side to side. “Look here,” whispered Hugh, still absorbed in his own danger, “don’t let them know that Sylvie just wandered in here. Don’t let them start asking her any questions; it’s too dangerous. Let her be—one of the family.” He smiled maliciously. “Let her be your wife, Pete.” Then, as though that picture had fired his love through its hint of jeopardy, he held out both arms suddenly: “Come here, Sylvie—lead her to me, Pete.”

The boy obeyed. But as her uncertain arms trembled about Hugh’s shoulders Pete turned sharply away. He heard the quick, anxious murmur of their voices:

“Hugh, dearest—are you afraid?” And his: “Trust me, little darling. Love me.” A kiss.

Then a sharp, whispered summons: “Quick, can’t you, Pete? Get these boards down.”

When Pete turned, Hugh had dropped into the darkness, and Sylvie stood flushed and with her hands over her face.

Bella had meantime been collecting the most characteristic of Hugh’s belongings—those that could not be supposed to belong to Pete—and now thrust them down into the hiding-place. The boards were rearranged, the rug laid evenly over them. Then the three stood staring at one another, listening helplessly to the nearing sounds.

“Oh, Pete,” Sylvie gasped, “tell me what I must do—or what I ought to say.”

“Tell them,” said Bella, “what Hugh told you—that you are Pete’s wife. They’ll be looking for a different household from that, and it will help to put them off.”

“But—but Pete won’t look old enough.”

“Yes, he will. He looks older than you,” Bella declared harshly. “You sit down and keep quiet; that’s the best you can do; and for God’s sake don’t look so scared. There’s a grave outside to show them, and nobody digs up a six-year-old grave. They won’t find Hugh. Nobody’s ever seen him. Don’t shake so, Sylvie. They may not even be after him; this country has sheltered other outlaws, you know. Hush! I hear them. I’ll be in the kitchen. Pete, be taking off your outdoor clothes. They’ll have seen Hugh’s tracks even if they haven’t seen him, so somebody’s got to have just come in. Be whistling and talking, natural and calm. Remember we’re all at home, just quiet and happy—no reason to be afraid. That’s it.”

Through her darkness Sylvie heard the knocking and Pete’s opening of the door, the scraping of snow, the questions, the simplicity of Pete’s replies.

Then she was made known. “My wife, gentlemen!” And a moment later: “My mother!” And she heard Bella’s greeting, loud and cheerful like that of a woman who is glad to see a visitor. Chairs were drawn up and cigarettes rolled and lighted. She smelt the sharp sweetness of the smoke. There was brief talk of the weather; Sylvie felt that while they talked, the two strangers searched the place and the faces of its inmates with cold, keen, suspicious eyes. She was grateful now for her blindness. There came a sharp statement:

“We’re looking for Ham Rutherford, the murderer.” Sylvie’s heart contracted in her breast.

“Well, sir,” laughed Pete, in his most boyish, light-hearted fashion, “that sounds interesting. But it’s a new name to me.”

“It’s an old case, however,” said the man, the man who spoke more like an Easterner than the sheriff. “Fifteen years old! They’ve dug it up again back East. The daughter of the man that was killed came into some money and thinks she can’t spend it any better than in hunting down her father’s murderer. Now, we’ve traced Rutherford to this country, and pretty close to this spot. He made a getaway before trial, and he came out here fifteen years ago. About two years later he sent back East for his kid brother—he’d be about your age now, Mr.—what you say your name was?—Garth, Peter Garth. You’ll have to excuse the sheriff; he’s bound to search your place.” Sylvie had heard the footsteps going through the three rooms. “A woman named Bertha Scrane, a distant cousin of Rutherford’s to whom he’d been kind, brought the child out. Now, Missis—what’s your name?”

“Bella Garth,” she said tranquilly. “I came out here with my husband, who died six years ago. He’s buried out there under the snow. I’ve lived here with my son and my son’s wife.”

“Yes. It’s not the household we’d been expecting to find. It’s a lonely place, Missis.” He looked at Sylvie. “I should think you’d prefer going to some town.”

“We’re used to it here now,” Bella answered.

“How’d your husband happen here, ma’am?”

“His health was poor; he’d heard of this climate, and he wanted to try trapping. He got on first-rate until the illness came so bad on him, and Pete’s done well ever since. We haven’t suffered any.”

“No, I guess not. You don’t look like you’d suffered.”

The talk went on, an awkward, half-disguised cross-questioning as to Bella’s birthplace, her life before she came out, her husband’s antecedents. She was extraordinarily calm, ready and reasonable with her replies.

“Well, sir”—the sheriff strolled back into the room—“I reckon these aren’t the parties we’re after. But look a-here, this is a description of Ham Rutherford. Likely you might have had a glimpse of him since you came into the country. When he made his getaway he was about thirty-two, height five feet eight, ugly, black-haired, noticeable eyes, manner violent. He was deformed, one leg shorter, one shoulder higher than the other, mouth twisted, and a scar across the nose. He’d been hurt in a fire when he was a child—”

Sylvie broke into a spontaneous ripple of mirth, the full measure of her relief. “Goodness,” she said with utter spontaneity. “There’s certainly never been a monster like that in this house, has there, Pete?”

It did more than all that had gone before to convince the inquisitors. From that minute there was a distinct relaxation; the evening, indeed, turned to one of sociability.

“We hate to inconvenience you, ma’am, but it seems like at this distance from town we’ve got to ask you for supper and a place to sleep.”

If it had not been for the thought of Hugh in hiding, that supper and the evening about the hearth would have been to Sylvie a pleasant one. The men, apparently laying aside all suspicion, were entertaining; their adventurous lives had bristled with exciting, moving, humorous experience. It was Sylvie herself, prompted by curiosity, believing as she did that the monster the sheriff had described bore no possible resemblance to the man she loved, who asked suddenly:

“Do tell us about the man you’re hunting for now—this Rutherford? Tell us about what he did.”

The Easterner gave her a look, and Bella, seeing it, chimed in: “Yes, sure. Tell us about his crime.”

Pete stood up and rolled another cigarette. Try as he might to steady his fingers, they trembled. He had never heard Hugh’s story. He did not want to hear it. The very name of Rutherford that had, in what now seemed to him another age, belonged to Hugh and to him was terrible in his ears. A sickness of dread seized him. Fortunately the eyes of neither of the men were upon him. Sylvie had their whole attention.

The detective spoke. “He was a storekeeper back in a university town, way East, where I came from. He kept a bookshop and had a heap of book-learning. I remember him myself, though I was a youngster. He was a wonderful, astonishing sort of chap, though as ugly as the devil; had a great gift of narration, never told the truth in his life, I guess, but that only made him all the more entertaining. And he had a temper—phew! Redhot! He’d fly out and storm and strike in all directions. That’s what did for him. Some fool quarrel about a book it was, and the man, a frequenter of the shop, a scholar, a scientist, professor at the university, accused Rutherford of lying. Rutherford had a heavy brass paper-cutter in his hand. The professor had a nasty tongue in his head. Well, a tongue’s no match for a paper-cutter. The professor said too much, called Rutherford a hump-backed liar and got a clip on the head that did for him.”

“It’s an ugly story,” said Sylvie. Bella and Pete retained their silence.

“Murder ain’t pretty telling, as a general thing,” remarked the sheriff.

“No, though I’ve heard of cases where a man was justified in killing another man—I mean to save some one he loved from dreadful suffering,” Sylvie replied.

“Well, ma’am, I don’t know about that. I’ve read stories that make it look that way, but in all my experience, it’s the cowards and the fools that kill, and they do it because they’re lower down, closer to the beast, or perhaps to an uncontrolled child, than most of us.”

“But there was a time,” Bella said, with a smothered passion, “when an insult to a gentleman’s honor had to be avenged.”

“Yes, ma’am,” drawled the sheriff, “in them history days things was fixed up to excuse animal doin’s, kind of neater and easier and more becomin’ than they are now. Well, Mr. Garth, can we have our beds? We’ve kept these ladies up talkin’ long enough. Your mother looks plum wore out.”

They slept in the bed usually shared by Pete and Hugh. Pete lay on the floor in the living-room not far from his brother’s hiding-place—lay there rigid and feverish, staring at the night. Sylvie, at Bella’s side, slept no better. Her imagination went over and over the story of Ham Rutherford’s crime. She saw the little dark bookshop, the professor’s thin, sneering face, the hideous anger of the cripple, the blow, the dead body, Rutherford’s arrest. And when her brain was sick, it would turn for relief to the noble story of Hugh’s self-sacrifice, only to be balked by a sense of unreality. What the detective had told, briefly and dryly, lived in her mind convincingly; but Hugh’s romance, that had glowed on his tongue, now lay lifeless on her fancy. Back her mind would go to the bookshop, the gibing professor, the heavy paper-cutter.

In the dawn she heard Bella get up with a deep-shaken sigh and go about her preparations for breakfast. But it was noon before the two men left.