After a time, which seemed interminable to Roy, Kasba halted. They had arrived at a poorly constructed camp. Two figures muffled in kaip-puks lay side by side within it. Over the feet of one a rough pilot-coat had been thrown. Kasba had come across the camp, and recognizing the coat as belonging to Broom, divined that he lay beneath it.
“We are there, Bekothrie,” said Kasba softly. Despite her efforts to control it, excitement had unstrung her nerves and thrown a quiver into her voice.
“Point the revolver,” commanded Roy, fiercely.
Kasba hesitated. What if it was not Broom after all, but some innocent person? But only a second did she falter, for the remembrance of Broom’s diabolical doings caused implacable wrath to surge within her. Cautiously she led Roy forward a few more steps, then halted and with a steady hand pointed the extended revolver at the sleeper’s head.
“Now!” she whispered.
Roy stiffened his arm and slipped a finger on the trigger. He did not hesitate to kill Broom while he slept. Broom’s crimes had been too heinous to permit of mercy. A grim look came into Roy’s face; his finger was pressing the trigger with fearful intent, when the bright face of a young girl flashed before his mind’s eye and in his imagination a clear voice repeated the word’s of Lena’s letter in his ear: “For in my opinion it is murder for a man to take another’s life, no matter what the circumstances that seem to extenuate it.”
Then, to Kasba’s surprise, instead of firing, he dropped his hand to his side, letting the weapon fall to the ground. “I cannot do it!” he cried hoarsely. “Take me away.”
The girl stared at him, vastly amazed at this sudden, inexplicable change from grim determination to profound helplessness. Then obediently she caught his hand and led him away.
They had scarcely turned before the figure sprang to its feet. It was Broom! His eyes rolled in his head and he trembled like an aspen leaf. With a ghastly white face he stood staring after them as they slowly retraced their steps.
He stared, motionless in his astonishment, for he had awakened just in time to hear Roy’s words, and the revolver lying half buried in the snow was all that was necessary to explain that his life had been spared. Then, too, he was overpowered at the sight of Roy’s affliction. Just how he became aware of this it is hard to determine—perhaps from Roy’s words, “Take me away,” or his faltering footsteps, or the sight of the girl leading him by the hand; perhaps the three combined. However, the sight of the once active Roy moving slowly, laboriously away overwhelmed him with remorse. In a flash the heinousness of his acts came home to him. Sinking upon his knees in the snow he hid his face in his hands, rocking himself and groaning like one demented, taking no heed of time, nor that his hands were exposed to the bitter cold wind. When at last he rose to his feet he staggered like a drunken man; the strength dependent upon his feverish excitement of the last few days had suddenly left him, leaving him as weak as one just recovered from a long and severe illness. He had paid a terrible toll for his mad fits of passion; his eyes were sunken, his cheekbones protruded. Scarcely ever sleeping or eating, his thoughts had been concentrated on possessing the girl. Overcome with baffled fury at discovering her gone from the Fort, he had travelled hot-foot in pursuit, but now that she was within his reach, now that he had discovered Roy powerless to protect her, his feelings underwent a sudden revulsion. The spark of humanity that had long lain dormant under all his recklessness burned bright at the sight of Roy’s pathetic figure, and all idea of further pursuit faded from his mind as completely as if it had never filled it. In its stead a raging desire to go far away from the man he had injured possessed him. His mad desire to possess Kasba, to secure the witnesses of his diabolical acts, and by some measures not quite plain to him to prevent them from bringing him to account, were forgotten in his anxiety, which in the weak state of mind rapidly developed into monomania—to place a great distance between himself and them. And the dogged, mad glare of a set purpose was in his eyes as with a savage kick he awoke his companion, crying: “Get up, you black devil, we are going back.”