CHAPTER XII.
GATHERING SHADOWS.
Ambrose, hastening back to Gaviller's house with a heart full of anxiety, came upon Gordon Strange as he rounded the corner of the company store. The breed was at the door. Evidently he harbored no resentment, for his face lighted up at the sight of an old friend.
"Well!" he said. "So you came to see us."
Ambrose felt the same unregenerate impulse to punch the smooth face. However, with more circumspection than upon the previous occasion, he returned a civil answer.
"Have you heard?" asked Strange, with an expression of serious concern.
Ambrose reflected that Strange probably knew a message had been sent.
"Heard what?" he asked non-committally.
"Mr. Gaviller was taken sick last night."
"What's the matter with him?" asked Ambrose quickly.
Strange shrugged. "I do not know exactly. The doctor has not come out of the house since he was sent for. A stroke, I fancy."
"I will go to the house and inquire," said Ambrose.
He proceeded, telling himself that Strange had not got any change out of him this time. He was relieved by the breed's news; he had feared worse.
To be sure, it was terribly hard on Colina, but on his own account he could not feel much pain of mind over a sickness of Gaviller's.
The half-breed girl who admitted him showed a scared yellow face. Evidently the case was a serious one. She ushered him into the library. The aspect, the very smell of the little room, brought back the scene of two days before and set Ambrose's heart to beating.
Presently Colina came swiftly in, closing the door behind her. She was very pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She showed the unnatural self-possession that a brave woman forces on herself in the presence of a great emergency. Her eyes were tragic.
She came straight to his arms. She lowered her head and partly broke down and wept a little.
"Ah, it's so good to have some one to lean on!" she murmured.
"Your father—what is the matter with him?" asked Ambrose.
The look in her eyes and her piteous shaking warned him to expect something worse than the tale of an illness.
She lifted her white face.
"Father was shot last night," she said.
"Good God!" said Ambrose. "By whom?"
"We do not know."
"He's not—he's not—" Ambrose's tongue balked at the dreadful word.
She shook her head. "A dangerous wound, not necessarily fatal. We can't tell yet."
"You have no idea who did it?"
Colina schooled herself to give him a coherent account. The sight of her forced calmness, with those eyes, was inexpressibly painful to Ambrose.
"No. He went out after dinner. He said he had to see a man. He did not mention his name. He came back at dusk. I was on the veranda. He was walking as usual—perfectly straight. But one hand was pressed to his side.
"He passed me without speaking. I followed him in. In the passage he said: 'I am shot. Tell no one but Giddings. Then he collapsed in my arms. He has not spoken since."
Ambrose heard this with mixed feelings. His heart bled for Colina. Yet the grim thought would not down that the tyrannous old trader had received no more than his deserts. He soothed her with clumsy tenderness.
"Why do you want to keep it a secret?" he asked, after a while.
"Father wished it," said Colina. "We think he must have had a good reason. The doctor thinks it is best. There has been a good deal of trouble with the natives; many of them are ugly and rebellious. And we whites are so few!
"Father could keep them in hand. They are in such awe of him; they regard him as something almost more than mortal. If they learn that he is vulnerable—who knows what might happen!"
"I understand," said Ambrose grimly.
"So no one knows, not even the servants. I have hidden all the—things. Of course, the man who did it will never tell." The calm voice suddenly broke in a cry of agony. "Oh, Ambrose!"
He comforted her mutely.
"It is so dreadful to think that any one should hate him so!" said poor Colina. "So unjust! They are like his children. He is severe with them only for their good!"
Ambrose concealed a grim smile at this partial view of John Gaviller.
"He lies there so white and still," she went on. "It nearly breaks my heart to think how I have quarreled with him and gone against his wishes. If waiting on him day and night will ever make it up to him, I'll do it!"
Ambrose's breast stirred a little with resentment, but he kept his mouth shut. He understood that it was good for Colina to unburden her breast.
"Ah, thank God I have you!" she murmured.
They heard the doctor coming, and Colina drew away. She introduced the two men.
"Mr. Doane is my friend," she said. "He is one of us."
The doctor favored Ambrose with a glance of astonishment before making his professional announcement. Ambrose saw the typical hanger-on of a trading-post, a white man of Gaviller's age, careless in dress, with a humorous, intelligent face, showing the ravages of a weak will. At present, with the sole responsibility of an important case on his shoulders, he looked something like the man he was meant to be.
It was no time for commonplaces.
"John is conscious," he said directly. "He is showing remarkable resistance. There is no need for any immediate alarm. He wants to make a statement. I made the excuse of getting pencil and paper to come down. In a matter of such importance I think there should be another witness."
"I will go," said Colina.
Giddings shook his head. "Your father expressly forbade it," he said.
"He wishes to spare you."
Colina made an impatient gesture, but seemed to acquiesce.
"You go," she said to Ambrose.
Giddings looked doubtful, but said nothing.
"I'm afraid the sight of me—" Ambrose began.
"I don't mean that you should go in," said Colina. "If you stand in the doorway he cannot see you the way he lies."
Ambrose nodded and followed Giddings out.
"What is the wound?" he asked.
"Through the left lung. He will not die of the shot. I can't tell yet what may develop."
Ambrose halted at the open door of Gaviller's room. The windows looked out over the river, and the cooling northwest wind was wafted through. The hospital-like bareness of the room evinced a simple taste in the owner. The gimcracks he loved to make were all for the public rooms below.
The head of the bed was toward the door. On the pillow Ambrose could see the gray head, a little bald on the crown.
Giddings, after feeling his patient's pulse, sat down beside the bed with pad and pencil.
"I'm ready to take down what you say," he said.
The wounded man said in a weak but surprisingly clear voice:
"You understand this is not to be used unless the worst happens to me."
Giddings nodded.
"You must give me your word that no proceedings will be taken against the man I name—unless I die. I will not die. When I get up I will attend to him."
"I promise," said Giddings.
After a brief pause Gaviller said:
"I was shot by the breed known as Sandy Selkirk."
Ambrose sharply caught his breath. A great light broke upon him.
Gaviller went on:
"He caught a black fox last winter that he has persistently refused to give up to me. Out of sheer obstinacy he preferred to starve his family. Yesterday Strange told me he thought it likely Selkirk would try to dispose of the skin to Ambrose Doane, the free-trader who is hanging around the fort."
Giddings sent a startled glance toward the door.
"Strange said perhaps news of it had been carried down the river, and that was what Doane had come for. So I went to Selkirk's shack last night to get it. I consider it mine, because Selkirk already owes the company its value. Any attempt to dispose of it elsewhere would be the same as robbing me.
"Selkirk refused to give it up, and I took it. He shot me from behind.
There were no witnesses but his family. That is all I want to say."
"I have it," murmured Giddings.
The gray head rolled impatiently on the pillow. "Giddings, don't let that skin get away. I rely on you. Be firm. Be secret."
"I'll do my best," said the doctor.
He came to the door, ostensibly to close it, showing a scared face. "I didn't know what was coming," his lips shaped.
Ambrose nodded to him reassuringly, meaning to convey that nothing he had heard would influence his actions.
Giddings closed the door, and Ambrose returned down-stairs with a heart that sunk lower at each step. What he had at first regarded calmly enough as Gaviller's tragedy he now clearly saw was likely to prove tragic for himself.
It was useless to try to put Colina off.
"I must know!" she cried passionately. "I'm the head here now. I must know where we all stand."
Ambrose told her. To save her feelings he instinctively softened the harsher features. It did not do his own cause any good later.
"Oh, the wretch!" breathed Colina between set teeth. "I know him! A sneaking little scoundrel! Just the one to shoot from behind! To think we must let him go! That is the hardest."
Ambrose was silent.
"We must get the skin," she went on eagerly. "Giddings can't handle the natives. You do that for me."
"It is too late," said Ambrose grimly. "He is gone with it."
"Gone?" she exclaimed, with raised eyebrows. "How do you know?"
"He came to my camp at dawn," said Ambrose. Honesty compelling him, he added with a touch of defiance; "I gave him my dugout."
Colina shrank from him.
"You helped him get away!" she cried.
"I didn't know what had happened," he said indignantly.
"Of course not!" said Colina, with quick penitence.
But she did not return to him. Presently the frown came back; she began to breathe quickly. "You saw the skin; you must have talked with him. You took his part against father!"
Ambrose had nothing to say. He could have groaned aloud in his helplessness to avert the catastrophe that he saw coming.
It was as if a horrible, black-shrouded shape had stepped between him and Colina.
She, too, was aware of it. For an age-long moment they stared at each other with a kind of chilled terror.
Neither dared speak of what both were thinking.
At last Colina tried to wave the hideous fantom away.
"Ah, we mustn't quarrel now!" she said tremulously. "Couldn't the man be overtaken and the skin recovered?"
"Possibly," admitted Ambrose. "I wouldn't advise it."
Colina, freshly affronted, struggled with her anger.
"Let me explain," said Ambrose. "I agreed to take the skin from him, but on the understanding that out of the price Mr. Gaviller must be paid every cent of what was owing him." His reasonable air suddenly failed him. "Colina," he burst out imploringly, "it was worth more than double what your father offered! That was the trouble! What is a skin to us? I pledge myself to transmit whatever price it brings to your father. Won't that do?"
"Don't say anything more about it," said Colina painfully. "You're right; we mustn't quarrel about a thing like that."
A wretched constraint fell upon them. For the moment the catastrophe had been averted, but both felt it was only for the moment.
They had nothing to say to each other.
Finally Colina moved toward the door.
"I must see if anything is wanted up-stairs," she murmured. "Wait here for me."