Part 59

"What happened?" besought the distracted Garth.

The boy only looked at him stupidly.

"For God's sake collect your wits, and tell me!" he cried.

Charley, suddenly clutching Garth's arm, raised himself on his elbow. "Garth!" he cried wildly. "Natalie! Where is she?"

"God knows!" groaned Garth.

Terrible recollection returned to the boy's eyes. He sat up dizzy and nauseated. "I remember now!" he stuttered.

"Quick! Quick!" implored Garth.

"It was a little while after you went," Charley continued, getting it out with difficulty. "Natalie came and shook me. She said she heard a sound outside.... We waited and listened--a quarter of an hour it seemed.... We heard nothing.... Then suddenly with one big crack, the door flew open. They drove a log against it.... I couldn't tell how many came in--maybe three.... I shoved Natalie behind me in the farthest corner. I had the Winchester ready in my hands.... They dropped to the floor when they came in; and scattered. I couldn't tell where they were--I don't know how long it was.... Suddenly I heard something close to--somebody breathing. I fired. In the flash I saw them all, Xavier, Mary, and right over me, Nick Grylls, swinging the butt of his gun--then my head split in pieces ... and you came!"

"Oh, my God!" cried Garth.

He picked up his rifle, and ran like a madman from the cabin.

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 eyeballs 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 grass, 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 prone in the grass; 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 hoarsely. "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 grass. "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.