...
The wild hawk to the wind-swept
sky
The deer to the wholesome wold,
And the heart of a man to the heart
of a maid,
As it was in the days of old.
KIPLING
THEY were doing their work very
badly. They got the rope around his neck, and tied his wrists with moose-bush
withes, but again he fell, sprawling, turning, twisting over the leaves,
tearing up everything around him like a trapped panther.
He got the rope away from them;
he clung to it with bleeding fists; he set his white teeth in it, until
the jute strands relaxed, unravelled, and snapped, gnawed through by his
white teeth.
Twice Tully struck him with a
gum hook. The dull blows fell on flesh rigid as stone.
Panting, foul with forest mould
and rotten leaves, hands and face smeared with blood, he sat up on the
ground, glaring at the circle of men around him.
"Shoot him!" gasped Tully, dashing
the sweat from his bronzed brow; and Bates,
breathing heavily, sat down
on a log and dragged a revolver from his rear pocket. The man on the ground
watched him; there was froth in the corners of his mouth.
"Git back!" whispered Bates,
but his voice and hand trembled. "Kent," he stammered, "won't ye hang?"
The man on the ground glared.
"Yéve got to die, Kent,"
he urged; "they all say so. Ask Lefty Sawyer; ask Dyce; ask Carrots.-Hés
got to swing fur it-ain't he, Tully ?-Kent, fur God's sake, swing fur these
here gents!"
The man on the ground panted;
his bright eyes never moved.
After a moment Tully sprang on
him again. There was a flurry of leaves, a crackle, a gasp and a grunt,
then the thumping and thrashing of two bodies writhing in the brush. Dyce
and Carrots jumped on the prostrate men. Lefty Sawyer caught the rope again,
but thejute strands gave way and he stumbled. Tully began to scream "Hés
chokin' me !" Dyce staggered out into the open, moaning over a broken wrist.
"Shoot!" shouted Lefty Sawyer,
and dragged Tully aside. "Shoot Jim Bates! Shoot
straight, b'God!"
"Git back!" gasped Bates, rising
from the fallen log.
The crowd parted right and left;
a quick report rang out-another -another. Then from the whirl of smoke
a tall form staggered, dealing blows-blows that sounded sharp as the crack
of a whip.
"Hés off! Shoot straight!"
they cried.
There was a gallop of heavy boots
in the woods. Bates, faint and dazed, turned his head.
"Shoot!" shrieked Tully.
But Bates was sick; his smoking
revolver fell to the ground; his white face and pale eyes contracted. It
lasted only a moment; he started after the others, plunging, wallowing
through thickets of osier and hemlock underbrush.
Far ahead he heard Kent crashing
on like a young moose in November, and he knew he was making for the shore.
The others knew too. Already the gray gleam of the sea cut a straight line
along the forest edge; already the soft clash of the surf on the rocks
broke faintly through the forest silence.
"Hés got a canoe there!"
bawled Tully. "Héll be into it!"
And he was into it, kneeling
in the bow, driving his paddle to the handle. The rising sun gleamed like
red lightning on the flashing blade; the canoe shot to the crest of a wave,
hung, bows dripping in the wind, dropped into the depths, glided, tipped,
rolled, shot up again, staggered, and plunged on.
Tully ran straight out into the
cove surf; the water broke against his chest, bare and wet with sweat.
Bates sat down on a worn black rock and watched the canoe listlessly.
The canoe dwindled to a speck
of gray and silver; and when Carrots, who had run back to the gum camp
for a rifle, returned, the speck on the water might have been easier to
hit than a loon's head at twilight. So Carrots, being thrifty by nature,
fired once, and was satisfied to save the other cartridges. The canoe was
still visible, making for the open sea. Somewhere beyond the horizon lay
the keys, a string of rocks bare as skulls, black and slimy where the sea
cut their base, white on the crests with the excrement of sea birds.
"Hés makin' fur the Key
to Grief!" whispered Bates to Dyce.
Dyce, moaning, and nursing his
broken wrist, turned a sick face out to sea.
The last rock seaward was the
Key to Grief, a splintered pinnacle polished by the sea. From the Key to
Gnef, seaward a day's paddle, if a man dared, lay the long wooded island
in the ocean known as Grief on the charts of the bleak coast.
In the history of the coast,
two men had made the voyage to the Key to Grief, and from there to the
island. One of these was a rum-crazed pelt hunter, who lived to come back;
the other was a college youth; they found his battered canoe at sea, and
a day later his battered body was flung up in the cove.
So, when Bates whispered to Dyce,
and when Dyce called to the others, they knew that the end was not far
off for Kent and his canoe; and they turned away into the forest, sullen,
but satisfied that Kent would get his dues when the devil got his.
Lefty spoke vaguely of the wages
of sin. Carrots, with an eye to thrift, suggested a plan for an equitable
division of Kent's property.
When they reached the gum camp
they piled Kent's personal effects on a blanket.
Carrots took the inventory: a
revolver, two gum hooks, a fur cap, a nickel~plated watch, a pipe, a pack
of new cards, a gum s~ek, forty pounds of spruce gum, and a frying pan.
Carrots shuffled the cards, picked
out the joker, and flipped it pensively int0 the fire. Then he dealt cold
decks all around.
When the goods and chattels of
their late companion had been divided by chance for there was no
chance to cheat-somebody remembered Tully.
"Hés down there on the
coast, starin' after the canoe," said Bates huskily.
He rose and walked toward a heap
on the ground covered by a blanket. He started to lift the blanket, hesitated,
and finally turned away. Under the blanket lay Tully's brother, shot the
night before by Kent.
"Guess wéd better wait
till Tully comes," said Carrots uneasily. Bates and Kent had been campmates.
An hour later Tully walked into camp.
He spoke to no one that day.
In the morning Bates found him down on the coast digging, and said: "Hello,
Tully! Guess we ain't much hell on lynchin'!"
"Naw," said Tully. "Git a spade."
"Goin' to plant him there?"
"Yep."
"Where he kin hear them waves?"
"Yep."
"Purty spot."
"Yep."
"Which way will he face?"
"Where he kin watch fur that
damned canoe!" cried Tully fiercely.
"He-he can't see," ventured Bates
uneasily. "Hés dead, ain't he?"
"Héll heave up that there
sand when the canoe comes back! An' it's a-comin'! An' Bud Kent'll be in
it, dead or alive! Git a spade!"
The pale light of superstition
flickered in Batés eyes. He hesitated.
"The-the dead can't see," he
began; "kin they?"
Tully turned a distorted face
toward him.
"Yer lie!" he roared. "My brother
kin see, dead or livin'! An' héll see the hangin' of Bud Kent! An'
héll git up outer the grave fur to see it, Bill Bates! I'm tellin'
ye! I'm tellin' ye! Deep as I'll plant him, héll heave that there
sand and call to me, when the canoe comes in! I'll hear him; I'll be here!
An' wéll live to see the hangin' of Bud Kent!"
About sundown they planted Tully's
brother, face to the sea.
End of PART ONE..... GO TO PART
TWO..... 
