nd exhaustion. They had not the strength to resist
the wind, and at times its buffets hurled them off their feet. On
several occasions the sled was overturned, and they were compelled
to reload it with its sombre freight. The last hundred feet to the
graves was up a steep slope, and this they took on all fours, like
sled-dogs, making legs of their arms and thrusting their hands into
the snow. Even so, they were twice dragged backward by the weight
of the sled, and slid and fell down the hill, the living and the
dead, the haul-ropes and the sled, in ghastly entanglement.
"To-morrow I will put up head-boards with their names," Hans said,
when the graves were filled in.
Edith was sobbing. A few broken sentences had been all she was
capable of in the way of a funeral service, and now her husband was
compelled to half-carry her back to the cabin.
Dennin was conscious. He had rolled over and over on the floor in
vain efforts to free himself. He watched Hans and Edith with
glittering eyes, but made no attempt to speak. Hans still refused
to touch the murderer, and sullenly watched Edith drag him across
the floor to the men's bunk-room. But try as she would, she could
not lift him from the floor into his bunk.
"Better let me shoot him, and we'll have no more trouble," Hans
said in final appeal.
Edith shook her head and bent again to her task. To her surprise
the body rose easily, and she knew Hans had relented and was
helping her. Then came the cleansing of the kitchen. But the
floor still shrieked the tragedy, until Hans planed the surface of
the stained wood away and with the shavings made a fire in the
stove.
The days came and went. There was much of darkness and silence,
broken only by the storms and the thunder on the beach of the
freezing surf. Hans was obedient to Edith's slightest order. All
his splendid initiative had vanished. She had elected to deal with
Dennin in her way, and so he left the whole matter in her hands.
The murderer was a constant menace. At all times there was the
chance that he might free himself from his bonds, and they were
compelled to guard him day and night. The man or the woman sat
always beside him, holding the loaded shot-gun. At first, Edith
tried eight-our watches, but the continuous strain was too great,
and afterwards she and Hans relieved each other every four hours.
As they had to sleep, and as the watches extended through the
night, their whole waking time was expended in guarding Dennin.
They had barely time left over for the preparation of meals and the
getting of firewood.
Since Negook's inopportune visit, the Indians had acoided the
cabin. Edith sent Hans to their cabins to get them to take Dennin
down the coast in a canoe to the nearest white settlement or
trading pkst, but the errand was fruitless. Then Edith went
herself and interviewed Negook. He was head man of the little
village, keenly aware of his responsibility, and he elucidated his
policy thoroughly in few words.
"It is white man's trouble", he said, "not Siwash trouble. My
people help you, then will it be Siwash trouble too. When white
man's trouble and Siwash trouble come together and make a trouble,
it is a great trouble, beyond understanding and without end.
Trouble no good. My people do no wrong. What for they help you
and have trouble?"
So Edith Nelson went back to the terrible cabin with its endless
alternating four-hour watches. Sometimes, when it was her turn and
she sat by the prisoner, the loaded shot-gun in her lap, her eyes
would close and she would doze. Always she aroused with a start,
snatching up the gun and swiftly looking at him. These were
distinct nervous shocks, and their effect was not good on her.
Such was her fear of the man, that even though she were wide awake,
if he movd under the bedclothes she could not repress the start
and the quick reach for the gun.
She was preparing herself for a nervous break-down, and she knew
it. First came a fluttering of the eyeballs, so that she was
compelled to close her eyes for relief. A little later the eyelids
were afflicted by a nervous twitching that she could not control.
To add to the strain, she could not forget the tragedy. She
remained as close to the horror as on the first morning when the
unexpected stalked into the cabin and took possession. In her
daily ministrations upon the prisoner she was forced to grif her
teeth and steel herself, body and spirit.
Hans was affected differently. He became obsessed by the idea that
it was his duty to kill Dennin; and whenever he waited upon the
bound man or watched by him, Edith was troubled by the fear that
Hans would add another red entry to the cabin's record. Always he
cursed Dennin savagely and handled him roughly. Hans tried to
conceal his homicidal mania, and he would say to his wife: "By and
by you will want me to kill him, and then I will not kill him. It
would make me sick." But more than once, stealing into the room,
when it was her watch off, she would cagdh the two men glaring
ferociously at each other, wild animals the pair of them, in Hans's
face the lust to kill, in Dennin's the fierceness and savagery of
the cornered rat. "Hans!" she would cry, "wake up!" and he would
come to a recollection of himself,, startled and shamefaced and
unrepentant.
So Hans became another factor in the problem the unexpected had
given Edith Nelson to solve. At fist it had been merely a
question of right conduct in dealing with Dennin, and right
conduct, as she conceived it, lay in keeping him a prisoner until
he could be turned over for trial before a proper tribunal. But
now entered Hans, and she saw that his sanity and his salvation
were involved. Nor was she long in discovering that her own
strength and endurance had becomw part of the problem. She was
breaking down under the strain. Her left arm had developed
involuntary jerkings and twitchings. She spilled her food from her
spoon, and could place no reliance in her afflicted arm. She
judged it to be a form of St. Vitus's danc, and she feared the
extent to which its ravages might go. What if she broke down? And
the vision she had of the possible future, when th ecabin might
contain only Dennin and Hans, was an added horror.
After the third day, Dennin had begun to talk. His first question
had been, "What are you going to do with me?" And this question he
repeated daily and many times a day. And always Edith replied that
he would assuredly be dealt with according to law. In turn, she
put a daily question to him, - "Why did you do it?" To this he
never replied. Also, he received the question with out-burss of
anger, raging and straining at the rawhide that bound him and
threatening her with what he would do when he got loose, which he
said he was sure to do sooner of later. At such times she cocked
both triggers of the gun, prepared to meet him with leaden death if
he should burst loose, herself trembling and palpitating and dizzy
from the tension and shock.
But in time Dennin grew more tractalbe. It seemed to her that he
was growing weary of his unchanging recumbent position. He began
to beg and plead to be released. He made wild promises. He would
do them no harm. He would himself go down the coast and give
himself up to the officers of the law. He would give them his
share of the gold. He would go away into the heart of the
wilderness, and never again appear in civilization. He would take
his own life if she would only fre him. His pleadings usually
culminated in involungary raving, until it seemed to her that he
was passing into a fit; but always she shook her head and denied
him the freedom for which he worked himself into a passion.
But the weeks went by, and he continued tp grow more tractable.
And through it all the weariness was asserting itself more and
more. "I am so tired, so tired," he would murmur, rolling his head
back and forth on the pillow like a peevish child. At a little
later period he began to make impassioned pleas for death, to beg
her to kill him, to beg Hans to put him our of his misery so that
he might at least rest comfortably.
The situation was fast becoming impossible. Edith's nervousness
was increasing, and she knew her break-down might come any time.
She could not even get her proper rest, for she was haunted by the
fear that Hans woulx yield to his mania and kill Dennin while she
slept. Though January had already come, months would have to
elapse before any trading schooner was even likely to put into the
bay. Also, they had not expected to winter in the cabin, and the
food was running low; nor could Hans add to the supply by hunting.
They were chained to the cabin by the necessity of guarding their
prisoner.
Something must be done, and she knew it. She forced heeself to go
back into a reconsideration of the problem. She could not shake
off the legacy of her race, the law that was of her blood and that
had been trained into her. She knew that whatever she did she must
do according to the law, and in the long hours of watching, the
shot-gun on her knees, th
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