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Jacqueline of Golden River

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<h3> CHAPTER XVI </h3> <h3> TEE OLD ANGEL </h3> Presently the Indian touched me on the shoulder and I looked up. He had a plateful of steaming stew in his hands, and set it down beside me. "Eat!" he said in English. I was too dispirited and dejected to obey him at first. But soon I managed to fall to, and I was surprised to discover how ravenous I was. I had eaten hardly anything for days, and only a few mouthfuls since morning. As I was eating there came a scratching at the door, and the Eskimo-dog pushed its way into the cabin and came bounding to my side. I stroked and petted it, and gave it the remnants of my meal, while Pierre watched us. "You know him dog?" he asked. "I saw it in New York," I answered. "It brought me to Mlle. Jacqueline." My mind was very much alert just then. It was as though some hidden monitor within me had taken control to guide me through a maze of unknown dangers. It was that inner prompting which had forbidden me to say "Mme. d'Epernay." I had a consciousness of some impending horror. And I was shaking and all a sweat—with fear, too—gripping fear! Yet the old name sounded as sweet as ever to my lips. The Indian drew the stool near me and sat down. "You meet Mlle. Jacqueline in New York?" he asked. "I brought her back," I answered. "I know," the Indian answered. "I meet Simon; drive him from St. Boniface to château. He want shoot you. I say no, you blind man, him leave you die in snow. I take Ma'm'selle Jacqueline to St. Boniface when she run 'way. Simon not here then or I be 'fraid. Simon bad man. He give my gal to Jean Petitjean. My gal good gal till Simon give her to Jean Petitjean. Simon bad man. Me kill him one day." I saw a glimmer of hope now, though of what I hardly knew; or perhaps it was only the desire to talk of Jacqueline and hear her name upon my lips and Pierre's. "Pierre Caribou," I said, "wouldn't you like to have the old days back when M. Duchaine was master and there was no Simon Leroux?" He did not answer me, but I saw his face-muscles twitch. Then he pulled a pipe from his pocket and stuffed it with a handful of coarse tobacco. He handed it to me and struck a match and held it to the bowl. When the tobacco was alight he took another pipe and began smoking also. I had not smoked for days, and I inhaled the rank tobacco-fumes through the old pipe gratefully. I was smoking, with an Indian, and that meant what it has always meant. A black cloud seemed to have been lifted from my mind. And I was not trembling any more. But how warily I was reaching out toward my companion. "Pierre, I came here to save Mlle. Jacqueline," I said. "No can save him," he answered. "No can fight against Simon." "What, in the devil's name, is his power, then?" I cried. "Le diable," he replied. He may have misunderstood me, but the answer was apt. "No use fight him," he said. "All finish now. Old times, him finish, and my gal, too. Soon Pierre Caribou, him finish. No can fight Simon. Perhaps old Pierre kill him, nobody else." He looked steadily at me. "I poison him dogs," he added. "What?" I exclaimed. "Simon, him tell me long ago nobody come to château. So you finish, too, maybe. What he tell you, you go?" "Lacroix is going to take me to Père Antoine's cabin to-morrow morning," I answered. The Indian grunted. "Simon no mean to let you go," he said. "He mean kill you. You know too much. Sometime he kill me, too, or I kill him. Once I live in old château at St. Boniface with old M'sieur Duchaine. Good days then, not like how. Hunt plenty game. Fine people come from Quebec, not like Simon. M'sieur Charles small boy then. All finish now." "Pierre," I said, taking him by the arm, "what is the Old Angel—le Vieil Ange?" He stared stolidly at me. "Why you ask that?" he said. "Because Lacroix has been instructed to take me by that route," I answered. Pierre said not a word, but smoked in silence. I sat upon the couch waiting. His face was quite impassive, but I knew that my question was of tremendous import to me. At last he shook the ashes out of his pipe and rose. "Come with me," he said. "I show you—because you frien' of Ma'm'selle Jacqueline. Come." I followed him out of the hut. A large moon was just rising out of the east, but it was not yet high enough to cast much light. Still Pierre seemed in deadly terror of Simon, for he motioned me to creep, as he was creeping, out of the enclosure, bending low beside the fence, so that a watcher from the château might not detect our silhouettes against the snow-covered lake. When we were clear of the château, or, rather, the lit portion of it, Pierre began to run swiftly, still in a crouching position, and in this way we gained the tunnel entrance. He took me by the arm, for it was too dark for me to follow him by sight, and we traversed, perhaps, a mile of outer blackness. Then I began to see a gleam of moonlight in front of me, and, though I had not been conscious of making any turn, I discovered that we must have retraced our course completely, for I heard the roar of the cataracts again. Then we emerged upon a tiny shelf of rock some forty feet up the face of the wall, and quite invisible from below. It was a little above the level of the château roof, about a hundred yards away. Below me I could see the main entrance to the tunnel. We had a foothold of about ten feet on the level platform, which was slippery with smooth, black ice, and thundering over us, so near that I could almost have touched it had I stretched out my hand, the whirling torrent plunged into that hell below. It was a terrific scene. Above us that stream of white water, resembling nothing so much as a high-pressure jet from a fireman's hose magnified a thousand times, curved like a crystal arch, and so compact by reason of its force that not a drop splashed us. It was as strong as a steel girder, and I think it would have cut steel. Pierre caught my arm as I reeled, sick with the shock of the discovery, and yelled into my ear above the dim. "Le Vieil Ange!" he cried. "This way Simon mean you to go to-morrow. Lacroix him tell you: 'Get down, we find the road.' He take you up here and push you—so." He made a graphic gesture with his arm and pointed. I looked down, shuddering, into the black, foam-crested water, bubbling and whirling among the grotesque ice-pillars that stood like sentries upon the brink. The horror of the plot quite unmanned me. I groped for the shelter of the tunnel, and clung to the rocky wall to save myself from obeying a wild impulse to cast myself headlong into the flood below. I perceived now that the whole face of the wall was honeycombed with tunnels of natural formation running into the recesses of the limestone. I wondered that the whole structure, undermined thus and pressed down by the weight of millions of tons of ice above where the glacier lay, did not collapse and crumble down in ruin. Rivulets gushed from the wall everywhere, mingling their contributory waters with those of the twin torrents. The plateau seemed to be the watershed in which the drainage of the entire territory had its origin. Within those connecting caves, if a man knew their secret, he might hide from a regiment. Pierre followed me to the mouth of the tunnel and gripped me by both arms. "What you do?" he asked. "You go to Père Antoine to-night? What you do now?" I took the pistol from my coat pocket. "Pierre," I answered, "I have two bullets here, and both of them are for Simon. To-night I had him in my power and spared him. Now I am going back, and I shall shoot him down like a dog, whether he is armed or defenceless." "You no shoot Simon," the Indian grunted. "Le diable him frien'. You had him to-night; why you no shoot him then?" I did not know. But I was going to find out soon. "I am going back to kill him now," I repeated. "Afterward I do not know what will happen. But you can go on to the hut of Père Antoine and, if luck is with me, I shall meet you, there—perhaps with Mlle. Jacqueline." But I had little hope of meeting him with Jacqueline. Only I could not forbear to speak her name again. Pierre's face was twitching. "You no go back!" he cried. "Simon he kill you. No use to fight Simon. Him time not come yet. When him time come, he die." "When will it come?" I asked, looking at the man's features, which were distorted with frenzied hate. "I not know!" exclaimed Pierre. "I try find—cards to tell me. No Indian man in this part country remember how to tell me. In old days many could tell. Now I wait. When his time come, old Indian know. He kill Simon then himself. Nobody else kill Simon. No use you try." I own that, standing there and thinking upon the man's hellish design, his unscrupulousness, his singular success, I felt the old fear of Leroux in my heart, and with it something of the same superstition of his invulnerability. But my resolution surpassed my fear, and I knew it would not fail me. How often had I resolved—and forgotten. Not again would I forget. I shook the Indian's hands away and plunged forward into the tunnel again. I heard him calling after me; but I think he saw that I was not to be deterred, for he made no attempt to follow me. And so I went on and on through the darkness, and with each step toward the château my resolution grew. I seemed to have been travelling for a much longer period than before. Every moment, straining my eyes, I expected to see the light of the entrance, but the road went on straight apparently, and there was nothing but the darkness. At last I stood still; and then, just as I was thinking of retracing my steps, I felt a breath of air upon my forehead. I hurried on again, and in another minute I saw a faint light in front of me. Presently it grew more distinct. I was approaching the tunnel's mouth. But I stopped again. I was waiting for something—to hear something that I did not hear. Then I knew that it was the sound of the waterfalls. In place of them there was only the gurgling of a brook. My elbow grated against the tunnel wall. I stepped sidewise toward the centre, and ran against the wall opposite. Now, by the stronger light, I could see that I had strayed once again into some byway, for the passage was hardly three feet wide and the low roof almost touched my head. It narrowed and grew lower still; but the light of the stars was clear in front of me and the cold wind blew upon my face; and I squeezed through into the same scooped-out hollow which I had entered on the same afternoon during the course of my journey toward the château. I had approached it apparently through a mere fissure in the rocks upon the opposite side and at a point where I had assured myself that there could be no passage. The little river gurgled at my feet, and in front of me I saw a candle flickering in the recesses of a cave, so elfinlike that I could distinguish it only by shielding my eyes against the moon and stars. I grasped my pistol tightly and crept noiselessly forward. If this should be Leroux, as I was convinced it was, I would not parley with him. I would shoot him down in his tracks. My moccasined feet pressed the soft ground without the slightest sound. I gained the entrance to the cave. Within it, his back toward me, a man was stooping down. As I stepped nearer him my feet dislodged a pebble, which rolled with a splash into the bed of the stream. The man started and spun around, and I saw before me the pale, melancholy features of Philippe Lacroix. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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