The thought sharpened his vision. He saw a thin shadow a little darker than the gloom of the river; it grew into shape; something grated lightly upon sand and pebbles5, and then he heard the guarded plash of feet in shallow water and saw some one pulling the canoe up higher. A second figure joined the first. They advanced a few paces and stopped. In a moment a voice called softly,
"M'sieu! M'sieu Carrigan!"
There was an anxious note in the voice, but Carrigan held his tongue. And then he heard the woman say,
"It was here, Bateese! I am sure of it!"
There was more than anxiety in her voice now. Her words trembled with distress. "Bateese—if he is dead—he is up there close to the trees."
"But he isn't dead," said Carrigan, raising himself a little. "He is here, behind the rock again!"
In a moment she had run to where he was lying, his hand clutching the cold barrel of the pistol which he had found in the sand, his white face looking up at her. Again he found himself staring into the glow of her eyes, and in that pale light which precedes the coming of stars and moon the fancy struck him that she was lovelier than in the full radiance of the sun. He heard a throbbing6 note in her throat. And then she was down on her knees at his side, leaning close over him, her hands groping at his shoulders, her quick breath betraying how swiftly her heart was beating.
"You are not hurt—badly?" she cried.
"I don't know," replied David. "You made a perfect shot. I think a part of my head is gone. At least you've shot away my balance, because I can't stand on my feet!"
Her hand touched his face, remaining there for an instant, and the palm of it pressed his forehead. It was like the touch of cool velvet7, he thought. Then she called to the man named Bateese. He made Carrigan think of a huge chimpanzee as he came near, because of the shortness of his body and the length of his arms. In the half light he might have been a huge animal, a hulking creature of some sort walking upright. Carrigan's fingers closed more tightly on the butt8 of his automatic. The woman began to talk swiftly in a patois9 of French and Cree. David caught the gist10 of it. She was telling Bateese to carry him to the canoe, and to be very careful, because m'sieu was badly hurt. It was his head, she emphasized. Bateese must be careful of his head.
David slipped his pistol into its holster as Bateese bent11 over him. He tried to smile at the woman to thank her for her solicitude—after having nearly killed him. There was an increasing glow in the night, and he began to see her more plainly. Out on the middle of the river was a silvery bar of light. The moon was coming up, a little pale as yet, but triumphant12 in the fact that clouds had blotted13 out the sun an hour before his time. Between this bar of light and himself he saw the head of Bateese. It was a wild, savage-looking head, bound pirate-fashion round the forehead with a huge Hudson's Bay kerchief. Bateese might have been old Jack14 Ketch himself bending over to give the final twist to a victim's neck. His long arms slipped under David. Gently and without effort he raised him to his feet. And then, as easily as he might have lifted a child, he trundled him up in his arms and walked off with him over the sand.
Carrigan had not expected this. He was a little shocked and felt also the impropriety of the thing. The idea of being lugged15 off like a baby was embarrassing, even in the presence of the one who had deliberately16 put him in his present condition. Bateese did the thing with such beastly ease. It was as if he was no more than a small boy, a runt with no weight whatever, and Bateese was a man. He would have preferred to stagger along on his own feet or creep on his hands and knees, and he grunted17 as much to Bateese on the way to the canoe. He felt, at the same time, that the situation owed him something more of discussion and explanation. Even now, after half killing18 him, the woman was taking a rather high-handed advantage of him. She might at least have assured him that she had made a mistake and was sorry. But she did not speak to him again. She said nothing more to Bateese, and when the half-breed deposited him in the midship part of the canoe, facing the bow, she stood back in silence. Then Bateese brought his pack and rifle, and wedged the pack in behind him so that he could sit upright. After that, without pausing to ask permission, he picked up the woman and carried her through the shallow water to the bow, saving her the wetting of her feet.
As she turned to find her paddle her face was toward David, and for a moment she was looking at him.
"Do you mind telling me who you are, and where we are going?" he asked.
"I am Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain," she said. "My brigade is down the river, M'sieu Carrigan."
He was amazed at the promptness of her confession19, for as one of the working factors of the long arm of the police he accepted it as that. He had scarcely expected her to divulge20 her name after the cold-blooded way in which she had attempted to kill him. And she had spoken quite calmly of "my brigade." He had heard of the Boulain Brigade. It was a name associated with Chipewyan, as he remembered it—or Fort McMurray. He was not sure just where the Boulain scows had traded freight with the upper-river craft. Until this year he was positive they had not come as far south as Athabasca Landing. Boulain—Boulain—The name repeated itself over and over in his mind. Bateese shoved off the canoe, and the woman's paddle dipped in and out of the water beginning to shimmer22 in moonlight. But he could not, for a time, get himself beyond the pounding of that name in his brain. It was not merely that he had heard the name before. There was something significant about it. Something that made him grope back in his memory of things. Boulain! He whispered it to himself, his eyes on the slender figure of the woman ahead of him, swaying gently to the steady sweep of the paddle in her hands. Yet he could think of nothing. A feeling of irritation23 swept over him, disgust at his own mental impotency. And the dizzying sickness was brewing24 in his head again.
"I have heard that name—somewhere—before," he said. There was a space of only five or six feet between them, and he spoke21 with studied distinctness.
"Possibly you have, m'sieu."
Her voice was exquisite25, clear as the note of a bird, yet so soft and low that she seemed scarcely to have spoken. And it was, Carrigan thought, criminally evasive—under the circumstances. He wanted her to turn round and say something. He wanted, first of all, to ask her why she had tried to kill him. It was his right to demand an explanation. And it was his duty to get her back to the Landing, where the law would ask an accounting26 of her. She must know that. There was only one way in which she could have learned his name, and that was by prying27 into his identification papers while he was unconscious. Therefore she not only knew his name, but also that he was Sergeant28 Carrigan of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. In spite of all this she was apparently29 not very deeply concerned. She was not frightened, and she did not appear to be even slightly excited.
He leaned nearer to her, the movement sending a sharp pain between his eyes. It almost drew a cry from him, but he forced himself to speak without betraying it.
"You tried to murder me—and almost succeeded. Haven't you anything to say?"
"Not now, m'sieu—except that it was a mistake, and I am sorry. But you must not talk. You must remain quiet. I am afraid your skull30 is fractured."
Afraid his skull was fractured! And she expressed her fear in the casual way she might have spoken of a toothache. He leaned back against his dunnage sack and closed his eyes. Probably she was right. These fits of dizziness and nausea31 were suspicious. They made him top-heavy and filled him with a desire to crumple32 up somewhere. He was clear-mindedly conscious of this and of his fight against the weakness. But in those moments when he felt better and his head was clear of pain, he had not seriously thought of a fractured skull. If she believed it, why did she not treat him a bit more considerately? Bateese, with that strength of an ox in his arms, had no use for her assistance with the paddle. She might at least have sat facing him, even if she refused to explain matters more definitely.
A mistake, she called it. And she was sorry for him! She had made those statements in a matter-of-fact way, but with a voice that was like music. She had spoken perfect English, but in her words were the inflection and velvety33 softness of the French blood which must be running red in her veins34. And her name was Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain!
With eyes closed, Carrigan called himself an idiot for thinking of these things at the present time. Primarily he was a man-hunter out on important duty, and here was duty right at hand, a thousand miles south of Black Roger Audemard, the wholesale35 murderer he was after. He would have sworn on his life that Black Roger had never gone at a killing more deliberately than this same Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain had gone after him behind the rock!
Now that it was all over, and he was alive, she was taking him somewhere as coolly and as unexcitedly as though they were returning from a picnic. Carrigan shut his eyes tighter and wondered if he was thinking straight. He believed he was badly hurt, but he was as strongly convinced that his mind was clear. And he lay quietly with his head against the pack, his eyes closed, waiting for the coolness of the river to drive his nausea away again.
He sensed rather than felt the swift movement of the canoe. There was no perceptible tremor36 to its progress. The current and a perfect craftsmanship37 with the paddles were carrying it along at six or seven miles an hour. He heard the rippling38 of water that at times was almost like the tinkling39 of tiny bells, and more and more bell-like became that sound as he listened to it. It struck a certain note for him. And to that note another added itself, until in the purling rhythm of the river he caught the murmuring monotone of a name Boulain—Boulain—Boulain. The name became an obsession40. It meant something. And he knew what it meant—if he could only whip his memory back into harness again. But that was impossible now. When he tried to concentrate his mental faculties41, his head ached terrifically.
He dipped his hand into the water and held it over his eyes. For half an hour after that he did not raise his head. In that time not a word was spoken by Bateese or Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain. For the forest people it was not an hour in which to talk. The moon had risen swiftly, and the stars were out. Where there had been gloom, the world was now a flood of gold and silver light. At first Carrigan allowed this to filter between his fingers; then he opened his eyes. He felt more evenly balanced again.
Straight in front of him was Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain. The curtain of dusk had risen from between them, and she was full in the radiance of the moon. She was no longer paddling, but was looking straight ahead. To Cardigan her figure was exquisitely42 girlish as he saw it now. She was bareheaded, as he had seen tier first, and her hair hung down her back like a shimmering43 mass of velvety sable44 in the star-and-moon glow. Something told Carrigan she was going to turn her face in his direction, and he dropped his hand over his eyes again, leaving a space between the fingers. He was right in his guess. She fronted the moon, looking at him closely—rather anxiously, he thought. She even leaned a little toward him that she might see more clearly. Then she turned and resumed her paddling.
Carrigan was a bit elated. Probably she had looked at him a number of times like that during the past half-hour. And she was disturbed. She was worrying about him. The thought of being a murderess was beginning to frighten her. In spite of the beauty of her eyes and hair and the slim witchery of her body he had no sympathy for her. He told himself that he would give a year of his life to have her down at Barracks this minute. He would never forget that three-quarters of an hour behind the rock, not if he lived to be a hundred. And if he did live, she was going to pay, even if she was lovelier than Venus and all the Graces combined. He felt irritated with himself that he should have observed in such a silly way the sable glow of her hair in the moonlight. And her eyes. What the deuce did prettiness matter in the present situation? The sister of Fanchet, the mail robber, was beautiful, but her beauty had failed to save Fanchet. The Law had taken him in spite of the tears in Carmin Fanchet's big black eyes, and in that particular instance he was the Law. And Carmin Fanchet was pretty—deucedly pretty. Even the Old Man's heart had been stirred by her loveliness.
"A shame!" he had said to Carrigan. "A shame!" But the rascally45 Fanchet was hung by the neck until he was dead.
Carrigan drew himself up slowly until he was sitting erect46. He wondered what Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain would say if he told her about Carmin. But there was a big gulf47 between the names Fanchet and Boulain. The Fanchets had come from the dance halls of Alaska. They were bad, both of them. At least, so they had judged Carmin Fanchet—along with her brother. And Boulain—
His hand, in dropping to his side, fell upon the butt of his pistol. Neither Bateese nor the girl had thought of disarming48 him. It was careless of them, unless Bateese was keeping a good eye on him from behind.
A new sort of thrill crept into Carrigan's blood. He began to see where he had made a huge error in not playing his part more cleverly. It was this girl Jeanne who had shot him. It was Jeanne who had stood over him in that last moment when he had made an effort to use his pistol. It was she who had tried to murder him and who had turned faint-hearted when it came to finishing the job. But his knowledge of these things he should have kept from her. Then, when the proper moment came, he would have been in a position to act. Even now it might be possible to cover his blunder. He leaned toward her again, determined49 to make the effort.
"I want to ask your pardon," he said. "May I?"
His voice startled her. It was as if the stinging tip of a whip-lash had touched her bare neck. He was smiling when she turned. In her face and eyes was a relief which she made no effort to repress.
"You thought I might be dead," he laughed softly. "I'm not, Miss Jeanne. I'm very much alive again. It was that accursed fever—and I want to ask your pardon! I think—I know—that I accused you of shooting me. It's impossible. I couldn't think of it—In my clear mind. I am quite sure that I know the rascally half-breed who pot-shotted me like that. And it was you who came in time, and frightened him away, and saved my life. Will you forgive me—and accept my gratitude50?"
There came into the glowing eyes of the girl a reflection of his own smile. It seemed to him that he saw the corners of her mouth tremble a little before she answered him.
"I am glad you are feeling better, m'sieu."
"And you will forgive me for—for saying such beastly things to you?"
She was lovely when she smiled, and she was smiling at him now. "If you want to be forgiven for lying, yes," she said. "I forgive you that, because it is sometimes your business to lie. It was I who tried to kill you, m'sieu. And you know it."
"But—"
"You must not talk, m'sieu. It is not good for you: Bateese, will you tell m'sieu not to talk?"
Carrigan heard a movement behind him.
"M'sieu, you will stop ze talk or I brak hees head wit' ze paddle in my han'!" came the voice of Bateese close to his shoulder. "Do I mak' ze word plain so m'sieu compren'?"
"I get you, old man," grunted Carrigan. "I get you—both!"
And he leaned back against his dunnage-sack, staring again at the witching slimness of the lovely Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain as she calmly resumed her paddling in the bow of the canoe.
点击收听单词发音
1 distress | |
n.苦恼,痛苦,不舒适;不幸;vt.使悲痛 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
2 trickle | |
vi.淌,滴,流出,慢慢移动,逐渐消散 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
3 steadily | |
adv.稳定地;不变地;持续地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
4 glistening | |
adj.闪耀的,反光的v.湿物闪耀,闪亮( glisten的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
5 pebbles | |
[复数]鹅卵石; 沙砾; 卵石,小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
6 throbbing | |
a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
7 velvet | |
n.丝绒,天鹅绒;adj.丝绒制的,柔软的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
8 butt | |
n.笑柄;烟蒂;枪托;臀部;v.用头撞或顶 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
9 patois | |
n.方言;混合语 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
10 gist | |
n.要旨;梗概 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
11 bent | |
n.爱好,癖好;adj.弯的;决心的,一心的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
12 triumphant | |
adj.胜利的,成功的;狂欢的,喜悦的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
13 blotted | |
涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 ); (用吸墨纸)吸干 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
14 jack | |
n.插座,千斤顶,男人;v.抬起,提醒,扛举;n.(Jake)杰克 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
15 lugged | |
vt.用力拖拉(lug的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
16 deliberately | |
adv.审慎地;蓄意地;故意地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
17 grunted | |
(猪等)作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 ); (指人)发出类似的哼声; 咕哝着说 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
18 killing | |
n.巨额利润;突然赚大钱,发大财 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
19 confession | |
n.自白,供认,承认 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
20 divulge | |
v.泄漏(秘密等);宣布,公布 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
21 spoke | |
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
22 shimmer | |
v./n.发微光,发闪光;微光 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
23 irritation | |
n.激怒,恼怒,生气 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
24 brewing | |
n. 酿造, 一次酿造的量 动词brew的现在分词形式 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
25 exquisite | |
adj.精美的;敏锐的;剧烈的,感觉强烈的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
26 accounting | |
n.会计,会计学,借贷对照表 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
27 prying | |
adj.爱打听的v.打听,刺探(他人的私事)( pry的现在分词 );撬开 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
28 sergeant | |
n.警官,中士 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
29 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
30 skull | |
n.头骨;颅骨 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
31 nausea | |
n.作呕,恶心;极端的憎恶(或厌恶) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
32 crumple | |
v.把...弄皱,满是皱痕,压碎,崩溃 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
33 velvety | |
adj. 像天鹅绒的, 轻软光滑的, 柔软的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
34 veins | |
n.纹理;矿脉( vein的名词复数 );静脉;叶脉;纹理 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
35 wholesale | |
n.批发;adv.以批发方式;vt.批发,成批出售 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
36 tremor | |
n.震动,颤动,战栗,兴奋,地震 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
37 craftsmanship | |
n.手艺 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
38 rippling | |
起涟漪的,潺潺流水般声音的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
39 tinkling | |
n.丁当作响声 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
40 obsession | |
n.困扰,无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
41 faculties | |
n.能力( faculty的名词复数 );全体教职员;技巧;院 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
42 exquisitely | |
adv.精致地;强烈地;剧烈地;异常地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
43 shimmering | |
v.闪闪发光,发微光( shimmer的现在分词 ) | |
参考例句: |
|
|
44 sable | |
n.黑貂;adj.黑色的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
45 rascally | |
adj. 无赖的,恶棍的 adv. 无赖地,卑鄙地 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
46 erect | |
n./v.树立,建立,使竖立;adj.直立的,垂直的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
47 gulf | |
n.海湾;深渊,鸿沟;分歧,隔阂 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
48 disarming | |
adj.消除敌意的,使人消气的v.裁军( disarm的现在分词 );使息怒 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
49 determined | |
adj.坚定的;有决心的 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
50 gratitude | |
adj.感激,感谢 | |
参考例句: |
|
|
欢迎访问英文小说网 |