LITMIR.BIZ

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lithe, splendid figure of a man, fine drawn with fasting and labor so that every steel-band muscle ridged the smooth brown skin—and dived head first into the clear, green water.

      Up in a burst of foam he rose. He struck out strongly and easily, his body sliding through the cove with supple grace. Into the air he blew spray, rolled over, dived again, lay on his back and floated; then wallowed lazily along, drawing life and strength again from the cold waters that had all his life been home to him.

      Now resting, now snatching at a chance scarlet leaf that floated on the surface, he gradually worked down along the wooded point toward the billowing current of the great whirlpool itself. Refreshed, soothed by the invigorating exercise, he laughed aloud in very wantonness.

      “Safe me!” he cried, and laughed again, and splashed the waters in an abandon of joy. No more the cell, the silence, the dark, the long torment of confinement, bitterer than death to his free spirit. No more that living hell—no more the terror of captivity!

      Life now, and the green woods—the camp-fire and the trail; the big, cold stars, unwinking in the frost-black sky; the blazing sunrise and the purple night; the waters and the wilderness; the blessed haven of the north!

      “Quelle chance! Quelle chance!”

      And so he neared the point. Then, of a sudden, he stopped swimming. A moment he stared at something, drifting there in the big vortex. A moment, wide-eyed and fearful, he peered. And his lax limbs, refusing their office, lay inert in the translucent flood.

      Toward him the drifting object eddied, steadily, surely, with a kind of calm assurance. Fascinated, he could not retreat; but stared with terror-stricken eyes.

      And so the thing won close to him; and now he saw it clearly—saw gray stripes and black, wide-floating hair that spread upon the waters—saw a white face, unseeing, calm, dead—

      Inexorably the body floated toward him. He could not move, nor could he cry his terror. Then all at once, as it came close, his lips parted in a bubbling gasp of fear.

      Choking, he thrust it from him, out into the current again. And with swift strokes, frantic and lashing, daring never look behind, he swam for the big rock again.

      “Ah! Ah, mother of God! Have mercy!”

      Just as the outlaw turned to flee this weltering terror something stirred in the thick and close-knit undergrowth of tamarack and moosewood. Off from the northward trail that skirted the Rivière St. Jean, from Pointe au Bouleau to the ferry, a man came pushing toward the river. An old man of the forest breed, with coonskin cap, high moccasins, and—in the crook of his right arm—a long squirrel-rifle.

      “Huh? What now?” he muttered, listening acutely. “All-fired sing’lar, I must say!”

      Through the thicket he broke, just below the big rock, and for a moment stood peering about him. Then all at once his plinking eye caught sight of the clothes laid there to dry.

      He started forward, lips parted under the sweep of his grizzled mustache, eyes narrowed amid a pucker of myriad wrinkles. In a moment he had reached the clothes. His hand advanced to take them up—but touched them not. Instead, with a grunt of astonishment, the old man froze to motionless attention.

      “Huh? What’s this? Hers?”

      Dazed for a moment, he stared about him. He blinked, trying to understand.

      “Her duds? My gal’s duds here?”

      A splash, as of rapid swimming, struck his ear. With the instinct of the woodsman, he dropped silently to his knees, peered over the rough shoulder of the rock—and saw the head of a man in the pool—a close-shaven, bullet-shaped head, cutting a rapid V as it drew near the bank.

      “Cuss me if I understand!” muttered the old ferryman, recoiling. “But it’s mighty cur’us. It’s wrong, some’res; all wrong. I—I gotta see what this here means, I cal’late!”

      More silently than he had come, he slid back through the undergrowth and knelt there, watching. On a high branch above a chipmunk made oration as it threw down bits of bark, but the old man’s eyes held steady. And the long rifle, laid through a moose-wood crotch, “covered” the rock with grim and deadly menace.

      On, on swam the outlaw, his body gleaming with ivory flashes through the waters of the pool. Now he had reached the shelving bottom; now, clambering ashore, he was crawling up the boulder.

      He gained its crest, and turned and stood there, wet and glistening in the first rays of the sun. A moment he peered, as though to see some object floating on the bosom of the whirlpool. Then all at once he laughed.

      “Ha, ha! Fool me!” he exclaimed. “What for I be afraid of dat? It is gone—gone down de riviêre, forever! And I live. I live an’ I am free!”

      On his splendid body, tall, lithe, muscular, the sun struck out prismatic color-glints from the crystal drops that trickled slowly down.

      And as he stood there, he raised both sinewy arms on high, and laughed again—laughed toward the sky, the river and the forest, laughed toward the wilderness, laughed in the very joy of life untrammeled.

      “Bon Dieu! he cried. “Free, free! Dey pas capab’ for keep me. She—she could not hold me! She say, in life I belong to dem, in eternity I belong to her. Ha, a lie! I have escape dem all. Dey have lose me—and she, she is gone. Liberté, liberté!”

      Back in the thicket the old father cuddled the rifle to his leathery cheek, unshaven, wrinkled, wan. Lovingly he patted its stock; and as he sighted down the barrel he smiled.

      “The heart,” he muttered. “Nothin’ but the heart will do for me!” Then he cried: “’Polyte!”

      Round swung the naked brute, magnificent in his virility, a sudden terror on his face. The rifle spat.

      Blotched on the left breast, vivid on that gleaming skin, the wound blossomed.

      No outcry made the felon, but crumpled silently forward, fell like an empty sack and slid down the grim flank of the rock. On his supple body, the ridges of the granite creased long lines. The old man, still kneeling in the thicket, heard the slither of the body as it vanished—then a sullen plash.

      He stood up, as though arising from prayer, his face beatified; and once more thrust his way through to the boulder.

      Already the undercurrent in the cove had borne the body off and away toward the larger swirling of the pools outside. It wallowed onward, onward, sank, rose, turned, and ever drifted toward the river.

      The father, standing motionless on the rock beside the garments of his daughter, leaned crossed arms on the muzzle of the long rifle, and watched in perfect silence. Silence held the whole wood. Even the chipmunk, far aloft, was still.

      Two minutes he looked, then three, and neither moved nor spoke.

      All at once, as the body swung out, out by the wooded point where rippled the strong current of the whirlpool, he saw another form—a white, dead face—and black hair that weltered wide upon the foam.

      A little eddy sucked the outlaw under for a moment. When he reappeared, he was close beside the body of the girl who had so loved him that life and death and the dark gates themselves had not prevailed against that love.

      A minute, the two seemed hesitant. Then the whirlpool took them—took them, together; and, hidden by the wooded point, they vanished from the old man’s peering eyes.

      He stood there yet a little space, his lips curved by a strange and silent smile. Then, kneeling by the clothes, he kissed the rifle with deep reverence.

      And with his old, old face hidden in both hands that trembled only now when all their work was done, he knelt there on the rock in the fresh October sunlight of the coming day.

FIRE FIGHT FIRE

      Originally published in Munsey’s Magazine, Vol. 35 (1906).

      I.

      Hardly

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