One good turn

by Bertrand W. Sinclair

Nevertheless, even justifiable homicide brings a man foul of the law. Bill Goodrich knew himself to be justified. He was not sorry. The thing had been forced on him.

But—the other man cut quite a figure in the logging business. There was money behind him. There were others willing enough to carry on his feud, to get Bill Goodrich legally since a personal clash had failed to eliminate him. There was an economic motive functioning behind the purely personal one.

It seemed to Bill Goodrich that the hills offered a more desirable sanctuary than the courts. He might come off clear in court—in the hills, those rugged hills up-thrusting into blue sky, his life and liberty depended solely upon his own unaided effort, his skill, his fortitude, his own individual quickness of hand and brain.

So he left an awed group staring at the dead man sprawled limp in the mellow sunshine and trudged back to his own cabin, some two miles distant. No one stayed him. He knew no man who had witnessed the affair would meddle with him. But he knew also that a telephone line ran from the scene of the shooting to Campbell River, whence shortly a provincial constable in a government launch would set out to arrest him. And Bill Goodrich had no mind to suffer arrest. He had a distrust of courts, a horror of jails—which last dated back to his Salinas experience. That had remained a vivid picture in his mind those five years. He could so easily visualize that cramped, foul-smelling steel cage, the drab walls. The memory filled him with a sense of living burial, which he swore he would never undergo. Right or wrong he was for freedom, the open sky, the friendly silence of the woods. A man, he said to himself, might as well be dead as in jail—better, if the tubercle bacilli had gotten a tiny foothold in one of his lungs.

So he put a reasonable quantity of staple foods, a small silk tent, two blankets, his warmest and stoutest clothing and boots, his rifle and cartridges, some fishing gear and a good ax in a Peterboro canoe. He waited till dark—chancing the arrival of an officer meantime—that no watchful eye might note the direction of his flight.

He paddled then in the dusk across the head of Lewis Channel, passed between the Redondas and the mouth of Malaspina Inlet. At the lower end of a nameless islet standing in the mouth of Desolation Sound he picked up the thrum of a motor. But this gave him no uneasiness. It came from far up channel, not from the westward whither the police launch must come. He bore in for the shadow of the islet, however, as matter of precaution. He did not want to be seen, even casually.

But while he was still a cable short of the nearest point, a finger of light, dazzling white, split the darkness and made a round, brilliant spot on the shore. It swept slowly over weedy bowlders and beached driftwood, and came wavering out across the water until it rested upon him.

The beam held him in its white circle like an actor in the spotlight. To the eyes behind that searching shaft he knew he and every detail of his equipment must stand out bold as a single black letter on a sheet of white newsprint. Then the light flicked out. The launch passed him almost within hailing distance. By her dim outline and her cabin lights Goodrich recognized her as a provincial forestry boat, driving down out of Desolation Sound. Her crew knew him. They would hear of the killing. They would talk.

Goodrich considered, watching the stern light of the cruiser grow dim across the water. He had started with a well-defined plan. It called for many hundred miles of travel in the highest, roughest part of the roughest mountain chain in North America. It meant hardship indescribable. But it meant ultimately that he would gain reasonable immunity from the consequences of his act— and also give him an even chance to destroy the tubercle bacilli which had once more gained foothold in his lung tissue. He did not want to change this plan. He could think of none better, none so good.

He paddled across to the mainland shore. Up the long sweep of Homfray Channel he traveled under cover of the dark, lying up on bold, cliffy points during the day, with his canoe hidden in thickets of salal. Finally he passed into the narrow reach of Toba Inlet, a thirty-mile stretch lined by cliffs that lifted a thousand feet sheer from salt water, by thick-forested slopes, by mountains that were but a setting for glaciers which gleamed ghostly in the moonlight. He was an infinitesimal speck creeping along a sullen shore, a little awed by the heights above and the gloom below.