Jake, it seemed, had long ago formed the plan of setting the two brothers adrift in the forest and of casting suspicion on John Edmonds’ memory. He had applied to the Indian Kaniska to help him, but the man had refused on account of his friendship for John. So the matter had apparently ended until one night, passing through Two Rivers, Jake had shown the Indians his furs and Laughing Mary had seen the brown bear’s skin.
Indians have still so much of the child in them that, when they see something they greatly desire, they will barter away their last property on earth to gain possession of it. With just such longing did the woman covet the bear skin. Jake’s price was her husband’s help in his scheme against the Edmonds and that was the bargain they finally made. Certainly she had not realized fully what Jake had in mind, or known, when she lent herself to do his bidding, what she had really done.
Only when the days passed and the Edmonds boys did not come back, when she discovered, moreover, that Jake was withholding the bear skin and had no intention of really giving it to her, did she begin to see in the depths of her fumbling, clouded mind, what it was she had brought about. She had gained possession of the coveted skin by threatening to tell the whole truth to Hugh, as the Edmonds’ friend, and she had learned, from the consternation of both Jake and her husband, just how ugly a deed they had accomplished between them.
She had learned more of the gravity of the matter when Hugh went through Two Rivers to seek help from Oscar Dansk; she had sat brooding by the fire day after day, more and more repentant yet never knowing what to do. She had finally come through the forest to learn for herself how matters stood and had arrived the night of the fire, just before the storm. She had been imprisoned in the cabin with Jake during those five days of fierce snowfall and she made Hugh understand, even in her halting English, that it was much the same as being within the same four walls with a madman. Her husband had returned to Two Rivers, so that she was alone with Jake and must listen hour after hour to the tumult of words that she scarcely understood. All his hopes of holding the valley, of keeping Oscar from establishing his claim, of proving that no one could successfully defy him, all this must stand or fall by whether the boys could hold the cottage and Oscar Dansk could register his claim.
At first he had been certain that they would go the moment their stores were destroyed. When he had learned from the smoke in their chimney and the steady light in their windows that they were to stay, his fury knew no bounds. Even during the storm, in which no ordinary man could walk abroad and live, he went forth every night to go close to the cottage on the hill and see if its defenders were not weakening. It had been the last stab to Laughing Mary’s dumbly repentant heart to hear that the boys were starving in the cabin opposite and it had been she who, the moment the snowfall cleared, had robbed Jake’s larder and toiled across the valley to bring them food.
Jake had already been behaving strangely that night, his rage, excitement and the long life of hardships and excesses had probably brought him near to the breaking point. He had tried to follow Laughing Mary, had floundered into a drift and had lain there in the fearful cold until she found him and dragged him home. His desperate fury at what she had done made her fear to come near him, and his terrible, helpless suffering from his frozen hands and feet made her feel that she must call for aid.
“When white man give up—wave white flag,” she said and pointed upward toward where she had raised the signal on the roof. That was the end of her story.
To all of it Jake had listened, with never a change of expression, never moving his eyes from Hugh, powerless to interrupt or to deny. Only when the Indian woman once mentioned Linda Ingmarsson’s name there was a change, a momentary wincing and a quivering of those steady eyes. Perhaps Hugh’s sensibilities had been sharpened by his recent experiences, for certainly he guessed quickly and as surely as though some one had told him that Jake must have loved Linda long ago, but that his bullying ways had failed before her courageous scorn of him.
“Old—live hard—die,” said Laughing Mary again when she came to the end. Such was her only comment on the fall of that once-feared master of Jasper Peak.
Hugh sat musing, stroking the bear skin on his knee and wondering what he might say to the woman, who looked up at him with such unhappy eyes.