With swift, nervous hands Stark searched through the policeman's pockets, and possessed himself of all spare cartridges, hunting knife, match safe, and notebook and pencils. "Just to make sure you don't scribble any farewell messages," he remarked.
The pipe and tobacco pouch, he did not bother to take, and in his haste he accidentally overlooked the small revolver Dexter had kept as evidence from the murder cabin, and which he carried buttoned in the right hand pocket of his stag shirt. With the fallen tree pressing upon his chest and right shoulder, Dexter could not have reached the weapon if he tried; nevertheless he took a strange satisfaction in the knowledge that he had not been stripped entirely of firearms.
Stark finished his rummaging, and stood up; and his eyes glittered as he looked upon his helpless enemy. "Unless somebody takes that tree off you, you're pinned there forever," he declared. "It'll be three weeks anyhow before any of your people can get into this valley, and you'll pass out before that. But you'll go slow. Hunger may do it, or exposure, or blood poisoning from broken bones, or maybe the beasts will get you." He sucked in his lips with morbid anticipation. "I heard a pack of timber wolves howling a couple of nights ago. We don't know how the end will come, but for you there's no escape. And you can lie there with the nerve oozing out and the fear creeping on—hours and days of it, perhaps—and all that time you can be telling yourself that Owen Stark did this thing to you."
The man stooped to unfasten the policeman's pack, and slung the weight over his own shoulder. He regarded Dexter for a moment with a smile that lacked all human semblance. Then he shouldered Dexter's provision pack, beckoned his companions, and turned away. "Come on!" he commanded. He moved off at a brisk pace along the course of the thawing brooklet, and Crill and Doucet trailed silently after him.
CHAPTER XXIII
FAIR WARNING
With his head bent backwards, Dexter watched the file of men make their way up the banks of the stream. Stark walked ahead, his eyes on the ground before him, never once deigning to glance behind. The others paused now and then to look covertly over their shoulders, as though still reluctant about obeying orders. But it would seem that none of them dared to interfere with their leader's plans while the black mood oppressed him, and they trudged, hushed and subdued, at his heels. Stark reached a bend of the brook and passed behind a flanking clump of alders, and his companions followed like straggling sheep, and, one by one, vanished from sight. Dexter was left alone by the silent brook.
He lay frowning, puzzled by the mystery of Stark's behavior. The man said he owed him a private grudge, but think back as he would, the corporal was unable to account for the bitter malice that could take satisfaction in his suffering and lingering death. As far as he recalled, he had never crossed Stark's trail before. He could not imagine what he had done to arouse such enmity. The riddle was beyond his power of guessing, and he had to give it up. It didn't matter a great deal anyhow. If he could not lift the tree trunk from his shoulder, earthly affairs would soon cease to vex him.
But while a spark of life remained he was not ready to abandon hope. There was no chance of help coming to him. By to-morrow morning his absence would begin to alarm Devreaux. But the colonel was incapable of travel. If he started out to search it would take him days to drag himself this distance from the cave, and long before he could possibly make such a trip, the trail would be washed away in the thawing snows. As Stark had said, it would be another fortnight before officers could break their way through from the outside. Yet Dexter would not let himself despair. It was up to him somehow to free himself.
Two men could not have raised the tree butt. But Dexter thought of an alternative possibility. He might be able to burrow out from under. The chance of accomplishment was slight. But any effort was better than lying supine, awaiting death. He gave his enemies time to pass out of sight and hearing, and then experimented to see what might be done.