CHAPTER XXI
THE MURDER IN THE SKY
However lightly he travels and however hard the snow may have packed, a man who has only two huskies and is handicapped by a body just recovered from sickness does not make much speed in winter travelling.
Through the long hours of the dreary November night Granger, with hard, set face, had pushed on up the Last Chance River, towards God's Voice, following in Spurling's tracks. It was the gold that he desired. And if he recaptured it, what then? He was not capable of carrying it out to Winnipeg by himself. He knew that his pursuit was madness; he had nothing to gain by it but revenge. He was hardly likely to gain even that, for the man in front of him had three dogs to his one, fuller rations, and a start of several hours; he could only hope to overtake him by the happening of some accident.
Yet he knew that he would overtake him, for he felt, beyond reach of argument, that Spurling was fated to die by his hand. Both of them had striven to avoid it; once he himself had fled that he might not commit the crime, and Spurling was now trying to escape that it might not come about. No matter what they did, it must happen. Though God should "advance a terrible right arm," and pluck them apart, and fling them to the opposite extremes of the world, they would surely travel and travel, perhaps involuntarily, till they came again together. It would have been far better if he had not been interfered with at the Shallows and had been permitted to accomplish his enmity there—so, more than three years of futile suffering might have been spared and Mordaunt would be still alive.
He was hardly conscious of any anger; his was the unreasoned relentless instinct of the pursuing hound. He was savage justice and the law of self-preservation personified. He was the will of destiny decreeing that Spurling should not reach El Dorado alive.
The dogs struggled on uncomplainingly; this was their first trip of the season and they were still comparatively fresh, though the man was tired. To the eastward the crescent of a faint old moon hung low in the sky. As Granger ran, he turned his head and, watching it, was thankful to see that at last the tardy dawn had begun to spread. Over the withered stretch of woodland to his right the Aurora swept between the stars, like an extinguishing angel, who caused them to flicker and, as he beat his wings about them, one by one to go out.
It was a morning of bitter coldness. As the breath left his nostrils, he could almost see it congeal and fall to the ground, a filmy sheet of ice. The heads of the huskies were clouded with smoke, so that they seemed to be on fire as they panted forward dragging on the traces.