God's Country—And the Woman

by James Oliver Curwood

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Scarcely had he crossed the threshold when an exclamation of surprise rose to Philip's lips. A few minutes before he had left his room even uncomfortably warm. A cold draught of air struck his face now, and the light was out. He remembered that he had left the lamp burning. He groped his way through the darkness to the table before he lighted a match.

As he touched the flame to the wick he glanced toward the window. It was open. A film of snow had driven through and settled upon the rug under it. Replacing the chimney, he took a step or two toward the window. Then he stopped, and stared at the floor. Some one had entered his room through the open window and had gone to the door opening into the hall. At each step had fallen a bit of snow, and close to the door was a space of the bare floor soppy and stained. At that point the intruder had stood for some moments without moving.

For several seconds Philip stared at the evidences of a prowling visitor without making a move himself. It was not without a certain thrill of uneasiness that he went to the window and closed it. It did not take him long to assure himself that nothing in the room had been touched. He could find no other marks of feet except those which led directly from the window to the door, and this fact was sufficient proof that whoever had visited his room had come as a listener and a spy and not as a thief.

It occurred to Philip now that he had found his door unlatched and slightly ajar when he entered. That the eavesdropper had seen them in the hall and had possibly overheard a part of their conversation he was quite certain from the fact that the window had been left open in a hurried flight.

For some time the impulse was strong in him to acquaint both Josephine and her father with what had happened, and with Jean Croisset's apparent treachery. He did not need to ask himself if it was the half-breed who had stolen into his room. He was as certain of that as he was of the identity of the face he had seen at the window some time before. And yet something held him from communicating these events of the night to the master of Adare House and the girl. He was becoming more and more convinced that there existed an unaccountable and mysterious undercurrent of tragic possibilities at Adare House of which Josephine was almost ignorant, and her father entirely so. Josephine's motherhood and the secret she was guarding were not the only things that were clouding his mental horizon now. There was something else. And he believed that Jean was the key to the situation.

He felt a clammy chill creep over him as he asked himself how closely Jean Jacques Croisset himself was associated with the girl he loved. It was a thought that almost made him curse himself for giving it birth. And yet it clung to him like a grim and haunting spectre that he would have crushed if he could. Josephine's confession of motherhood had not made him love her less. In those terrible moments when she had bared her soul to him, his own soul had suffered none of the revulsion with which he might have sympathized in others. It was as if she had fallen at his feet, fluttering in the agony of a terrible wound, a thing as pure as the heavens, hurt for him to cherish in his greater strength—such was his love. And the thought that Jean loved her, and that a jealousy darker than night was burning all that was human out of his breast, was a possibility which he found unpleasant to admit to himself.

So deeply was he absorbed in these thoughts that he forgot any immediate danger that might be threatening himself. He passed and repassed the window, smoking his pipe, and fighting with himself to hit upon some other tangible reason for Jean's unexpected change of heart. He could not forget his first impression of the dark-faced half-breed, nor the grip in which they had pledged their fealty. He had accepted Jean as one of ten thousand—a man he would have trusted to the ends of the earth, and yet he recalled moments now when he had seen strange fires smouldering far back in the forest man's eyes. The change in Jean alone he felt that he might have diagnosed, but almost simultaneously with his discovery of this change he had met Adare's wife—and she had puzzled him even more than the half-breed.

Restlessly he moved to his door again, opened it, and looked down the hall. The door of Josephine's room was closed, and he reentered his room. For a moment he stood facing the window. In the same instant there came the report of a rifle and the crashing of glass. A shower of shot-like particles struck his face. He heard a dull smash behind him, and then a stinging, red-hot pain shot across his arm, as if a whiplash had seared his naked flesh. He heard the shot, the crashing glass, the strike of the bullet behind him before he felt the pain—before he reeled back toward the wall. His heel caught in a rug and he fell. He knew that he was not badly hurt, but he crouched low, and with his right hand drew his automatic and levelled it at the window.

Never in his life had his blood leaped more quickly through his body than it did now. It was not merely excitement—the knowledge that he had been close to death, and had escaped. From out of the darkness Jean Croisset had shot at him like a coward. He did not feel the burn of the scratch on his arm as he jumped to his feet. Once more he ran swiftly through the hall. At the end door he looked back. Apparently the shot had not alarmed the occupants of Josephine's room, to whom the report of a rifle—even at night—held no special significance.