The Yellow-Back
Above God's Lake, where the Bent Arrow runs red as pale blood under its
crust of ice, Reese Beaudin heard of the dog auction that was to take
place at Post Lac Bain three days later. It was in the cabin of Joe
Delesse, a trapper, who lived at Lac Bain during the summer, and trapped
the fox and the lynx sixty miles farther north in this month of February.
"Diantre, but I tell you it is to be the greatest sale of dogs that has
ever happened at Lac Bain!" said Delesse. "To this Wakao they are coming
from all the four directions. There will be a hundred dogs, huskies, and
malamutes, and Mackenzie hounds, and mongrels from the south, and I
should not wonder if some of the little Eskimo devils were brought from
the north to be sold as breeders. Surely you will not miss it, my
friend?"
"I am going by way of Post Lac Bain," replied Reese Beaudin equivocally.
But his mind was not on the sale of dogs. From his pipe he puffed out
thick clouds of smoke, and his eyes narrowed until they seemed like coals
peering out of cracks; and he said, in his quiet, soft voice:
"Do you know of a man named Jacques Dupont, m'sieu?"
Joe Delesse tried to peer through the cloud of smoke at Reese Beaudin's
face.
"Yes, I know him. Does he happen to be a friend of yours?"
Reese laughed softly.
"I have heard of him. They say that he is a devil. To the west I was told
that he can whip any man between Hudson's Bay and the Great Bear, that he
is a beast in man-shape, and that he will surely be at the big sale at
Lac Bain."
On his knees the huge hands of Joe Delesse clenched slowly, gripping in
their imaginary clutch a hated thing.
"Oui, I know him," he said. "I know also--Elise--his wife. See!"
He thrust suddenly his two huge knotted hands through the smoke that
drifted between him and the stranger who had sought the shelter of his
cabin that night.
"See--I am a man full-grown, m'sieu--a man--and yet I am afraid of him!
That is how much of a devil and a beast in man-shape he is."
Again Reese Beaudin laughed in his low, soft voice.
"And his wife, mon ami? Is she afraid of him?"
He had stopped smoking. Joe Delesse saw his face. The stranger's eyes
made him look twice and think twice.
"You have known her--sometime?"
"Yes, a long time ago. "We were children together. And I have heard all
has not gone well with her. Is it so?"
"Does it go well when a dove is mated to a vulture, m'sieu?"
"I have also heard that she grew up to be very beautiful," said Reese
Beaudin, "and that Jacques Dupont killed a man for her. If that is so--"
"It is not so," interrupted Delesse. "He drove another man away--no, not
a man, but a yellow-livered coward who had no more fight in him than a
porcupine without quills! And yet she says he was not a coward. She has
always said, even to Dupont, that it was the way le Bon Dieu made him,
and that because he was made that way he was greater than all other men
in the North Country. How do I know? Because, m'sieu, I am Elise Dupont's
cousin."
Delesse wondered why Reese Beaudin's eyes were glowing like living coals.
"And yet--again, it is only rumor I have heard--they say this man,
whoever he was, did actually run away, like a dog that had been whipped
and was afraid to return to its kennel."
"Pst!" Joe Delesse flung his great arms wide. "Like that--he was gone.
And no one ever saw him again, or heard of him again. But I know that she
knew--my cousin, Elise. What word it was he left for her at the last she
has always kept in her own heart, mon Dieu, and what a wonderful thing he
had to fight for! You knew the child. But the woman--non? She was like an
angel. Her eyes, when you looked into them--hat can I say, m'sieu? They
made you forget. And I have seen her hair, unbound, black and glossy as
the velvet side of a sable, covering her to the hips. And two years ago I
saw Jacques Dupont's hands in that hair, and he was dragging her by it--"
Something snapped. It was a muscle in Reese Beaudin's arm. He had
stiffened like iron.
"And you let him do that!"
Joe Delesse shrugged his shoulders. It was a shrug of hopelessness, of
disgust.
"For the third time I interfered, and for the third time Jacques Dupont
beat me until I was nearer dead than alive. And since then I have made it
none of my business. It was, after all, the fault of the man who ran
away. You see, m'sieu, it was like this: Dupont was mad for her, and this
man who ran away--the Yellow-back--wanted her, and Elise loved the
Yellow-back. This Yellow-back was twenty-three or four, and he read
books, and played a fiddle and drew strange pictures--and was weak in the
heart when it came to a fight. But Elise loved him. She loved him for
those very things that made him a fool and a weakling, m'sieu, the books
and the fiddle and the pictures; and she stood up with the courage for
them both. And she would have married him, too, and would have fought for
him with a club if it had come to that, when the thing happened that made
him run away. It was at the midsummer carnival, when all the trappers and
their wives and children were at Lac Bain. And Dupont followed the
Yellow-back about like a dog. He taunted him, he insulted him, he got
down on his knees and offered to fight him without getting on his feet;
and there, before the very eyes of Elise, he washed the Yellow-back's
face in the grease of one of the roasted caribou! And the Yellow-back was
a man! Yes, a grown man! And it was then that Jacques Dupont shouted out
his challenge to all that crowd. He would fight the Yellow-back. He would
fight him with his right arm tied behind his back! And before Elise and
the Yellow-back, and all that crowd, friends tied his arm so that it was
like a piece of wood behind him, and it was his right arm, his fighting
arm, the better half of him that was gone. And even then the Yellow-back
was as white as the paper he drew pictures on. Ventre saint gris, but
then was his chance to have killed Jacques Dupont! Half a man could have
done it. Did he, m'sieu? No, he did not. With his one arm and his one
hand Jacques Dupont whipped that Yellow-back, and he would have killed
him if Elise had not rushed in to sav e the Yellow-back's purple face
from going dead black. And that night the Yellow-back slunk away. Shame?
Yes. From that night he was ashamed to show his face ever again at Lac
Bain. And no one knows where he went. No one--except Elise. And her
secret is in her own breast."
"And after that?" questioned Reese Beaudin, in a voice that was scarcely
above a whisper.
"I cannot understand," said Joe Delesse. "It was strange, m'sieu, very
strange. I know that Elise, even after that coward ran away, still loved
him. And yet--well, something happened. I overheard a terrible quarrel
one day between Jan Thiebout, father of Elise, and Jacques Dupont. After
that Thiebout was very much afraid of Dupont. I have my own suspicion.
Now that Thiebout is dead it is not wrong for me to say what it is. I
think Thiebout killed the halfbreed Bedore who was found dead on his
trap-line five years ago. There was a feud between them. And Dupont,
discovering Thiebout's secret--well, you can understand how easy it would
be after that, m'sieu. Thiebout's winter trapping was in that Burntwood
country, fifty miles from neighbor to neighbor, and very soon after
Bedore's death Jacques Dupont became Thiebout's partner. I know that
Elise was forced to marry him. That was four years ago. The next year old
Thiebout died, and in all that time not once has Elise been to Post Lac
Bain!"
"Like the Yellow-back--she never returned," breathed Reese Beaudin.
"Never. And now--it is strange--"
"What is strange, Joe Delesse?"
"That for the first time in all these years she is going to Lac Bain--to
the dog sale."
Reese Beaudin's face was again hidden in the smoke of his pipe. Through
it his voice came.
"It is a cold night, M'sieu Delesse. Hear the wind howl!"
"Yes, it is cold--so cold the foxes will not run. My traps and
poison-baits will need no tending tomorrow."
"Unless you dig them out of the drifts."
"I will stay in the cabin."
"What! You are not going to Lac Bain!"
"I doubt it."
"Even though Elise, your cousin, is to be there?"
"I have no stomach for it, m'sieu. Nor would you were you in my boots,
and did you know why he is going. Par les mille cornes d'u diable, I
cannot whip him but I can kill him--and if I went--and the thing happens
which I guess is going to happen--"
"Qui? Surely you will tell me--"
"Yes, I will tell you. Jacques Dupont knows that Elise has never stopped
loving the Yellow-back. I do not believe she has ever tried to hide it
from him. Why should she? And there is a rumor, m'sieu, that the
Yellow-back will be at the Lac Bain dog sale."
Reese Beaudin rose slowly to his feet, and yawned in that smoke-filled
cabin.
"And if the Yellow-back should turn the tables, Joe Delesse, think of
what a fine thing you will miss," he said.
Joe Delesse also rose, with a contemptuous laugh.
"That fiddler, that picture-drawer, that book-reader--Pouff! You are
tired, m'sieu, that is your bunk."
Reese Beaudin held out a hand. The bulk of the two stood out in the
lamp-glow, and Joe Delesse was so much the bigger man that his hand was
half again the size of Reese Beaudin's. They gripped. And then a strange
look went over the face of Joe Delesse. A cry came from out of his beard.
His mouth grew twisted. His knees doubled slowly under him, and in the
space of ten seconds his huge bulk was kneeling on the floor, while Reese
Beaudin looked at him, smiling.
"Has Jacques Dupont a greater grip than that, Joe Delesse?" he asked in a
voice that was so soft it was almost a woman's.
"Mon Dieu!" gasped Delesse. He staggered to his feet, clutching his
crushed hand. "M'sieu--"
Reese Beaudin put his hands to the other's shoulders, smiling, friendly.
"I will apologize, I will explain, mon ami," he said. "But first, you
must tell me the name of that Yellow-back who ran away years ago. Do you
remember it?"
"Oui, but what has that to do with my crushed hand? The Yellow-back's
name was Reese Beaudin--"
"And I am Reese Beaudin," laughed the other gently.
On that day--the day of Wakoa, the dog sale--seven fat caribou were
roasting on great spits at Post Lac Bain, and under them were seven fires
burning red and hot of seasoned birch, and around the seven fires were
seven groups of men who slowly turned the roasting carcasses.
It was the Big Day of the mid-winter festival, and Post Lac Bain, with a
population of twenty in times of quiet, was a seething wilderness
metropolis of two hundred excited souls and twice as many dogs. From all
directions they had come, from north and south and east and west; from
near and from far, from the Barrens, from the swamps, from the farther
forests, from river and lake and hidden trail--a few white men, mostly
French; half-breeds and 'breeds, Chippewans, and Crees, and here and
there a strange, dark-visaged little interloper from the north with his
strain of Eskimo blood. Foregathered were all the breeds and creeds and
fashions of the wilderness.
Over all this, pervading the air like an incense, stirring the desire of
man and beast, floated the aroma of the roasting caribou. The feast-hour
was at hand. With cries that rose above the last words of a wild song the
seven groups of men rushed to seven pairs of props and tore them away.
The great carcasses swayed in mid-air, bent slowly over their spits, and
then crashed into the snow fifteen feet from the fire. About each carcass
five men with razor-sharp knives ripped off hunks of the roasted flesh
and passed them into eager hands of the hungry multitude. First came the
women and children, and last the men.
On this there peered forth from a window in the factor's house the darkly
bearded, smiling face of Reese Beaudin.
"I have seen him three times, wandering about in the crowd, seeking
someone," he said. "Bien, he shall find that someone very soon!"
In the face of McDougall, the factor, was a strange look. For he had
listened to a strange story, and there was still something of shock and
amazement and disbelief in his eyes.
"Reese Beaudin, it is hard for me to believe."
"And yet you shall find that it is true," smiled Reese.
"He will kill you. He is a monster--a giant!"
"I shall die hard," replied Reese.
He turned from the window again, and took from the table a violin wrapped
in buckskin, and softly he played one of their old love songs. It was not
much more than a whisper, and yet it was filled with a joyous exultation.
He laid the violin down when he was finished, and laughed, and filled his
pipe, and lighted it.
"It is good for a man's soul to know that a woman loves him, and has been
true," he said. "Mon pere, will you tell me again what she said? It is
strength for me--and I must soon be going."
McDougall repeated, as if under a strain from which he could not free
himself:
"She came to me late last night, unknown to Dupont. She had received your
message, and knew you were coming. And I tell you again that I saw
something in her eyes which makes me afraid! She told me, then, that her
father killed Bedore in a quarrel, and that she married Dupont to save
him from the law--and kneeling there, with her hand on the cross at her
breast, she swore that each day of her life she has let Dupont know that
she hates him, and that she loves you, and that some day Reese Beaudin
would return to avenge her. Yes, she told him that--I know it by what I
saw in her eyes. With that cross clutched in her fingers she swore that
she had suffered torture and shame, and that never a word of it had she
whispered to a living soul, that she might turn the passion of Jacques
Dupont's black heart into a great hatred. And today--Jacques Dupont will
kill you!"
"I shall die hard," Reese repeated again.
He tucked the violin in its buckskin covering under his arm. From the
table he took his cap and placed it on his head.
In a last effort McDougall sprang from his chair and caught the other's
arm.
"Reese Beaudin--you are going to your death! As factor of Lac Bain--agent
of justice under power of the Police--I forbid it!"
"So-o-o-o," spoke Reese Beaudin gently. "Mon pere--"
He unbuttoned his coat, which had remained buttoned. Under the coat was a
heavy shirt; and the shirt he opened, smiling into the factor's eyes, and
McDougall's face froze, and the breath was cut short on his lips.
"That!" he gasped.
Reese Beaudin nodded.
Then he opened the door and went out.
Joe Delesse had been watching the factor's house, and he worked his way
slowly along the edge of the feasters so that he might casually come into
the path of Reese Beaudin. And there was one other man who also had
watched, and who came in the same direction. He was a stranger, tall,
closely hooded, his mustached face an Indian bronze. No one had ever seen
him at Lac Bain before, yet in the excitement of the carnival the fact
passed without conjecture or significance. And from the cabin of Henri
Paquette another pair of eyes saw Reese Beaudin, and Mother Paquette
heard a sob that in itself was a prayer.
In and out among the devourers of caribou-flesh, scanning the groups and
the ones and the twos and the threes, passed Jacques Dupont, and with him
walked his friend, one-eyed Layonne. Layonne was a big man, but Dupont
was taller by half a head. The brutishness of his face was hidden under a
coarse red beard; but the devil in him glowered from his deep-set,
inhuman eyes; it walked in his gait, in the hulk of his great shoulders,
in the gorilla-like slouch of his hips. His huge hands hung partly
clenched at his sides. His breath was heavy with whisky that Layonne
himself had smuggled in, and in his heart was black murder.
"He has not come!" he cried for the twentieth time. "He has not come!"
He moved on, and Reese Beaudin--ten feet away--turned and smiled at Joe
Delesse with triumph in his eyes. He moved nearer.
"Did I not tell you he would not find in me that narrow-shouldered,
smooth-faced stripling of five years ago?" he asked. "N'est-ce pas,
friend Delesse?"
The face of Joe Delesse was heavy with a somber fear.
"His fist is like a wood-sledge, m'sieu."
"So it was years ago."
"His forearm is as big as the calf of your leg."
"Oui, friend Delesse, it is the forearm of a giant."
"He is half again your weight."
"Or more, friend Delesse."
"He will kill you! As the great God lives, he will kill you!"
"I shall die hard," repeated Reese Beaudin for the third time that day.
Joe Delesse turned slowly, doggedly. His voice rumbled.
"The sale is about to begin, m'sieu. See!"
A man had mounted the log platform raised to the height of a man's
shoulders at the far end of the clearing. It was Henri Paquette, master
of the day's ceremonies, and appointed auctioneer of the great wakao. A
man of many tongues was Paquette. To his lips he raised a great megaphone
of birchbark, and sonorously his call rang out--in French, in Cree, in
Chippewan, and the packed throng about the caribou-fires heaved like a
living billow, and to a man and a woman and a child it moved toward the
appointed place.
"The time has come," said Reese Beaudin. "And all Lac Bain shall see!"
Behind them--watching, always watching--followed the bronze-faced
stranger in his close-drawn hood.
For an hour the men of Lac Bain gathered close-wedged about the log
platform on which stood Henri Paquette and his Indian helper. Behind the
men were the women and children, and through the cordon there ran a
babiche-roped pathway along which the dogs were brought.
The platform was twenty feet square, with the floor side of the logs hewn
flat, and there was no lack of space for the gesticulation and wild
pantomime of Paquette. In one hand he held a notebook, and in the other a
pencil. In the notebook the sales of twenty dogs were already tabulated,
and the prices paid.
Anxiously, Reese Beaudin was waiting. Each time that a new dog came up he
looked at Joe Delesse, but, as yet Joe had failed to give the signal.
On the platform the Indian was holding two malamutes in leash now and
Paquette was crying, in a well simulated fit of great fury:
"What, you cheap kimootisks, will you let this pair of malamutes go for
seven mink and a cross fox. Are you men? Are you poverty-stricken? Are
you blind? A breed dog and a male giant for seven mink and a cross fox?
Non, I will buy them myself first, and kill them, and use their flesh for
dog-feed, and their hides for fools' caps! I will--"
"Twelve mink and a Number Two Cross," came a voice out of the crowd.
"Twelve mink and a Number One," shouted another.
"A little better--a little better!" wailed Paquette. "You are waking up,
but slowly--mon Dieu, so slowly! Twelve mink and--"
A voice rose in Cree:
"Nesi-tu-now-unisk!"
Paquette gave a triumphant yell.
"The Indian beats you! The Indian from Little Neck Lake--an Indian beats
the white man! He offers twenty beaver--prime skins! And beaver are
wanted in Paris now. They're wanted in London. Beaver and gold--they are
the same! But they are the price of one dog alone. Shall they both go at
that? Shall the Indian have them for twenty beaver--twenty beaver that
may be taken from a single house in a day--while it has taken these
malamutes two and a half years to grow? I say, you cheap kimootisks--"
And then an amazing thing happened. It was like a bomb falling in that
crowded throng of wondering and amazed forest people.
It was the closely hooded stranger who spoke.
"I will give a hundred dollars cash," he said.
A look of annoyance crossed Reese Beaudin's face.
He was close to the bronze-faced stranger, and edged nearer.
"Let the Indian have them," he said in a low voice. "It is Meewe. I knew
him years ago. He has carried me on his back. He taught me first to draw
pictures."
"But they are powerful dogs," objected the stranger. "My team needs
them."
The Cree had risen higher out of the crowd. One arm rose above his head.
He was an Indian who had seen fifty years of the forests, and his face
was the face of an Egyptian.
"Nesi-tu-now Nesoo-sap umisk!" he proclaimed.
Henri Paquette hopped excitedly, and faced the stranger.
"Twenty-two beaver," he challenged. "Twenty-two--"
"Let Meewe have them," replied the hooded stranger.
Three minutes later a single dog was pulled up on the log platform. He
was a magnificent beast, and a rumble of approval ran through the crowd.
The face of Joe Delesse was gray. He wet his lips. Reese Beaudin,
watching him, knew that the time had come. And Joe Delesse, seeing no way
of escape, whispered:
"It is her dog, m'sieu. It is Parka--and Dupont sells him today to show
her that he is master."
Already Paquette was advertising the virtues of Parka when Reese Beaudin,
in a single leap, mounted the log platform, and stood beside him.
"Wait!" he cried.
There fell a silence, and Reese said, loud enough for all to hear:
"M'sieu Paquette, I ask the privilege of examining this dog that I want
to buy."
At last he straightened, and all who faced him saw the smiling sneer on
his lips.
"Who is it that offers this worthless cur for sale?" Lac Bain heard him
say. "P-s-s-st--it is a woman's dog! It is not worth bidding for!"
"You lie!" Dupont's voice rose in a savage roar. His huge shoulders
bulked over those about him. He crowded to the edge of the platform. "You
lie!"
"He is a woman's dog," repeated Reese Beaudin without excitement, yet so
clearly that every ear heard. "He is a woman's pet, and M'sieu Dupont
most surely does lie if he denies it!"
So far as memory went back no man at Lac Bain that day had ever heard
another man give Jacques Dupont the lie. A thrill swept those who heard
and understood. There was a great silence, in that silence men near him
heard the choking rage in Dupont's great chest. He was staring
up--straight up into the smiling face of Reese Beaudin; and in that
moment he saw beyond the glossy black beard, and amazement and unbelief
held him still. In the next, Reese Beaudin had the violin in his hands.
He flung off the buckskin, and in a flash the instrument was at his
shoulder.
"See! I will play, and the woman's pet shall sing!"
And once more, after five years, Lac Bain listened to the magic of Reese
Beaudin's violin. And it was Elise's old love song that he played. He
played it, smiling down into the eyes of a monster whose face was turning
from red to black; yet he did not play it to the end, nor a quarter of
it, for suddenly a voice shouted:
"It is Reese Beaudin--come back!"
Joe Delesse, paralyzed, speechless, could have sworn it was the hooded
stranger who shouted; and then he remembered, and flung up his great
arms, and bellowed:
"Oui--by the Saints, it is Reese Beaudin--Reese Beaudin come back!"
Suddenly as it had begun the playing ceased, and Henri Paquette found
himself with the violin in his hands. Reese Beaudin turned, facing them
all, the wintry sun glowing in his beard, his eyes smiling, his head
high--unfraid now, more fearless than any other man that had ever set
foot in Lac Bain. And McDougall, with his arm touching Elise's hair, felt
the wild and throbbing pulse of her body. This day--this hour--this
minute in which she stood still, inbreathing--had confirmed her belief in
Reese Beaudin. As she had dreamed, so had he risen. First of all the men
in the world he stood there now, just as he had been first in the days
when she had loved his dreams, his music, and his pictures. To her he was
the old god, more splendid,--for he had risen above fear, and he was
facing Dupont now with that strange quiet smile on his lips. And then,
all at once, her soul broke its fetters, and over the women's heads she
reached out her arms, and all there heard her voice in its triumph, its
joy, its fear.
"Reese! Reese--my sakeakun!"
Over the heads of all the forest people she called him beloved! Like the
fang of an adder the word stung Dupont's brain. And like fire touched to
powder, swiftly as lightning illumines the sky, the glory of it blazed in
Reese Beaudin's face. And all that were there heard him clearly:
"I am Reese Beaudin. I am the Yellow-back. I have returned to meet a man
you all know--Jacques Dupont. He is a monkey-man--a whipper of boys, a
stealer of women, a cheat, a coward, a thing so foul the crows will not
touch him when he dies--"
There was a roar. It was not the roar of a man, but of a beast--and
Jacques Dupont was on the platform!
Quick as Dupont's movement had been it was no swifter than that of the
closely-hooded stranger. He was as tall as Dupont, and about him there
was an air of authority and command.
"Wait," he said, and placed a hand on Dupont's heaving chest. His smile
was cold as ice. Never had Dupont seen eyes so like the pale blue of
steel.
"M'sieu Dupont, you are about to avenge a great insult. It must be done
fairly. If you have weapons, throw them away. I will search this--this
Reese Beaudin, as he calls himself! And if there is to be a fight, let it
be a good one. Strip yourself to that great garment you have on, friend
Dupont. See, our friend--this Reese Beaudin--is already stripping!"
He was unbuttoning the giant's heavy Hudson's Bay coat. He pulled it off,
and drew Dupont's knife from its sheath. Paquette, like a stunned cat
that had recovered its ninth life, was scrambling from the platform. The
Indian was already gone. And Reese Beaudin had tossed his coat to Joe
Delesse, and with it his cap. His heavy shirt was closely buttoned; and
not only was it buttoned, Delesse observed, but also was it carefully
pinned. And even now, facing that monster who would soon be at him, Reese
Beaudin was smiling.
For a moment the closely hooded stranger stood between them, and Jacques
Dupont crouched himself for his vengeance. Never to the people of Lac
Bain had he looked more terrible. He was the gorilla-fighter, the beast
fighter, the fighter who fights as the wolf, the bear and the
cat--crushing out life, breaking bones, twisting, snapping, inundating
and destroying with his great weight and his monstrous strength. He was a
hundred pounds heavier than Reese Beaudin. On his stooping shoulders he
could carry a tree. With his giant hands he could snap a two-inch
sapling. With one hand alone he had set a bear-trap. And with that mighty
strength he fought as the cave-man fought. It was his boast there was no
trick of the Chippewan, the Cree, the Eskimo or the forest man that he
did not know. And yet Reese Beaudin stood calmly, waiting for him, and
smiling!
In another moment the hooded stranger was gone, and there was none
between them.
"A long time I have waited for this, m'sieu," said Reese, for Dupont's
ears alone. "Five years is a long time. And my Elise still loves me."
Still more like a gorilla Jacques Dupont crept upon him. His face was
twisted by a rage to which he could no longer give voice. Hatred and
jealousy robbed his eyes of the last spark of the thing that was human.
His great hands were hooked, like an eagle's talons. His lips were drawn
back, like a beast's. Through his red beard yellow fangs were bared.
And Reese Beaudin no longer smiled. He laughed!
"Until I went away and met real men, I never knew what a pig of a man you
were, M'sieu Dupont," he taunted amiably, as though speaking in jest to a
friend. "You remind me of an aged and over-fat porcupine with his big
paunch and crooked arms. What horror must it have been for my Elise to
have lived in sight of such a beast as you!"
With a bellow Dupont was at him. And swifter than eyes had ever seen man
move at Lac Bain before, Reese Beaudin was out of his way, and behind
him; and then, as the giant caught himself at the edge of the platform,
and turned, he received a blow that sounded like the broadside of a
paddle striking water. Reese Beaudin had struck him with the flat of his
unclenched hand!
A murmur of incredulity rose out of the crowd. To the forest man such a
blow was the deadliest of insults. It was calling him an Iskwao--a
woman--a weakling--a thing too contemptible to harden one's fist against.
But the murmur died in an instant. For Reese Beaudin, making as if to
step back, shot suddenly forward--straight through the giant's crooked
arms--and it was his fist this time that landed squarely between the eyes
of Dupont. The monster's head went back, his great body wavered, and then
suddenly he plunged backward off the platform and fell with a crash to
the ground.
A yell went up from the hooded stranger. Joe Delesse split his throat.
The crowd drowned Reese Beaudin's voice. But above it all rose a woman's
voice shrieking forth a name.
And then Jacques Dupont was on the platform again. In the moments that
followed one could almost hear his neighbor's heart beat. Nearer and
still nearer to each other drew the two men. And now Dupont crouched
still more, and Joe Delesse held his breath. He noticed that Reese
Beaudin was standing almost on the tips of his toes--that each instant he
seemed prepared, like a runner, for sudden flight. Five feet--four--and
Dupont leapt in, his huge arms swinging like the limb of a tree, and his
weight following with crushing force behind his blow. For an instant it
seemed as though Reese Beaudin had stood to meet that fatal rush, but in
that same instant--so swiftly that only the hooded stranger knew what had
happened--he was out of the way, and his left arm seemed to shoot
downward, and then up, and then his right straight out, and then again
his left arm downward, and up--and it was the third blow, all swift as
lightning, that brought a yell from the hooded stranger. For though none
but the stranger had seen it, Jacques Dupont's head snapped back--and all
saw the fourth blow that sent him reeling like a man struck by a club.
There was no sound now. A mental and a vocal paralysis seized upon the
inhabitants of Lac Bain. Never had they seen fighting like this fighting
of Reese Beaudin. Until now had they lived to see the science of the
sawdust ring pitted against the brute force of Brobdingnagian, of Antaeus
and Goliath. For Reese Beaudin's fighting was a fighting without tricks
that they could see. He used his fists, and his fists alone. He was like
a dancing man. And suddenly, in the midst of the miracle, they saw
Jacques Dupont go down. And the second miracle was that Reese Beaudin did
not leap on him when he had fallen. He stood back a little, balancing
himself in that queer fashion on the balls and toes of his feet. But no
sooner was Dupont up than Reese Beaudin was in again, with the swiftness
of a cat, and they could hear the blows, like solid shots, and Dupont's
arms waved like tree-tops, and a second time he was off the platform.
He was staggering when he rose. The blood ran in streams from his mouth
and nose. His beard dripped with it. His yellow teeth were caved in.
This time he did not leap upon the platform--he clambered back to it, and
the hooded stranger gave him a lift which a few minutes before Dupont
would have resented as an insult.
"Ah, it has come," said the stranger to Delesse.
"He is the best close-in fighter in all--"
He did not finish.
"I could kill you now--kill you with a single blow," said Reese Beaudin
in a moment when the giant stood swaying. "But there is a greater
punishment in store for you, and so I shall let you live!"
And now Reese Beaudin was facing that part of the crowd where the woman
he loved was standing. He was breathing deeply. But he was not winded.
His eyes were black as night, his hair wind-blown. He looked straight
over the heads between him and she whom Dupont had stolen from him.
Reese Beaudin raised his arms, and where there had been a murmur of
voices there was now silence.
For the first time the stranger threw back his hood. He was unbuttoning
his heavy coat.
And Joe Delesse, looking up, saw that Reese Beaudin was making a mighty
effort to quiet a strange excitement within his breast. And then there
was a rending of cloth and of buttons and of pins as in one swift
movement he tore the shirt from his own breast--exposing to the eyes of
Lac Bain blood-red in the glow of the winter sun, the crimson badge of
the Royal Northwest Mounted Police!
And above the gasp that swept the multitude, above the strange cry of the
woman, his voice rose:
"I am Reese Beaudin, the Yellow-back. I am Reese Beaudin, who ran away. I
am Reese Beaudin,--Sergeant in His Majesty's Royal Northwest Mounted
Police, and in the name of the law I arrest Jacques Dupont for the murder
of Francois Bedore, who was killed on his trap-line five years ago!
Fitzgerald--"
The hooded stranger leaped upon the platform. His heavy coat fell off.
Tall and grim he stood in the scarlet jacket of the Police. Steel clinked
in his hands. And Jacques Dupont, terror in his heart, was trying to see
as he groped to his knees. The steel snapped over his wrists.
And then he heard a voice close over him. It was the voice of Reese
Beaudin.
"And this is your final punishment, Jacques Dupont--to be hanged by the
neck until you are dead. For Bedore was not dead when Elise's father left
him after their fight on the trap-line. It was you who saw the fight, and
finished the killing, and laid the crime on Elise's father. Mukoki, the
Indian, saw you. It is my day, Dupont, and I have waited long--"
The rest Dupont did not hear. For up from the crowd there went a mighty
roar. And through it a woman was making her way with outreaching
arms--and behind her followed the factor of Lac Bain.
-THE END-
James Oliver Curwood's short story: The Yellow-Back
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