Adventure, November 1915 — page 127: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Posts barrels, its strands~ whipping and rasping hollowly against the empty staves. With fumbling and cursing and awkward passes they knotted a noose in it and dropped the noose over Dubawni’s head. _“You, Betarde, climb up the spruce and run the end over a sound limb. Sit astride, since you seem to have the levelest head of them all tonight, and see that it does not bind in a crotch. And see that he does not climb up with his hands. Stamp him onthe head if he tries.” Like the half-gorilla he was, Betarde climbed up the leaning trunk and obeyed. Like the original ape, he straddled the limb over which he dropped the loose end of the rope and grinned down upon the primitive horde of cave-men below, men but little removed in dress and tastes and blood- lusting passions from the day of the stone ax and knotty club. The forking firelight licked his peering face, picking it out clearly against the somber background of the shadowy spruce branches, and the hempen rope he adjusted wriggled like a golden snake in mid-air. “She be all right now,” he announced with professional impassiveness. “Then lay hold, men, all who can find room for their hands,’ directed Helbaud. “Take up the slack and await my word to hoist.” The golden snake in mid-air smoothed out to a golden rod. The loop lying loosely upon Dubawni’s collar-bones drew in snugly against the ridged muscles of his neck. He could not struggle. He could not raise a hand to tear at the noose. Forhe was clamped, body, legs, arms and hands by the iron grip of the Arctic Fur hirelings, a grip that- would only loosen when their fellows threw their weight upon the taut rope. Tremors of rage twitched those bare muscles, and he breathed heavily, like a _ prisoned wild thing or a proud horse girthed against his will. His eyes blazed stub- bornly into the wild eyes of those who beset him and into the mocking eyes of Helbaud on the edge of the ring, and they never ceased to blaze till they encountered those of Masita, roughly gripped by one of Hel- baud’s hands. They had not yet broken his spirit, but Dubawni saw that they were on the verge of breaking hers. For an instant a great fear swept him, fear for Masita, if by any chance of Pillage 125 Helbaud carried his bluff through to the grim end. In that second he wavered for her sake, and Masita read his vacillation, and their eyes spoke to each other as plainly as their lips might have done. In hers was uncertainty, tumult, appeal, for the identi- cal fear that swept Dubawni was haunting her. Was it bluff, they seemed to demand of each other? Was the man lawless, ruth- less enough to hang a rival trader in cold blood because he would not bend to his will? Then into their minds leaped twin vis- _ions of the bloody, smoky day of the sack of Opawika Post. Dubawni saw again Hel- baud’s hirelings storming the walls, and Masita with the childish eyes of that day saw again her mother falling, white and still, to a stray ball because she would not take advantage of the chance to leave the post before the attack. Masita remembered. Dubawni remem- bered. Helbaud was the same man still. Were his methods the same? But with the free-trader the wave of vacillation, of fear for something other than himself, was as brief as a flash of light. He recalled the fact that he stood under the law of Quebec, that this assault upon him on a traveled highway was an abortion and an outrage; and with the recollection came re- turning poise. He faced the crowd and Helbaud with the old stubbornness, mingled with contemptuous scorn, and the fire of his fighting spirit flushed his browned cheek. Helbaud mistook the dawning light on his face for a change of mind, of attitude. “You reconsider?” he exulted, leaning forward upon the shoulders of the ring of men and extending the document of transfer towards Dubawni. ‘You will sign—when your hands are freed?, And we shall forget everything that has gone before!” He held up the paper, enticingly spread open like a tablet before the free-trader’s eyes, and eagerly waited for his assent. Again Dubawni saw the flattering terms and _ although he could not spurn the paper with kick or blow, he suddenly craned his neck forward and spat straight and true and co- piously into Helbaud’s eyes, so that the lat- ter, half-blinded, drew back with a roar and a curse. “Perdition!” he bellowed. ‘Up with him! Hoist!” COLMGC IOOL< (E(0)