Part 2 (2/2)
”What! again?” Emerson laughed skeptically. ”Better walk on your hands for a while.”
”And it's getting dark, too.”
”Never mind. It can't be far. Come now.”
He urged the fellow as he had repeatedly urged him before, for Fraser seemed to have the blood of a tramp in his veins; then he tried to question the woman, but she maintained a frightened silence. When they had finished their coffee, Emerson laid two silver dollars on the table, and they left the house to search out the river-trail again.
The early darkness, hastened by the storm, was upon them when they crept up the opposite bank an hour later, and through the gloom beheld a group of great shadowy buildings. Approaching the solitary gleam of light s.h.i.+ning from the window of the watchman's house, they applied to him for shelter.
”We are just off a long trip, and our dogs are played out,” Emerson explained. ”We'll pay well for a place to rest.”
”You can't stop here,” said the fellow, gruffly.
”Why not?”
”I've got no room.”
”Is there a road-house near by?”
”I don't know.”
”You'd better find out mighty quick,” retorted the young man, with rising temper at the other's discourtesy.
”Try the next place below,” said the watchman, hurriedly, slamming the door in their faces and bolting it. Once secure behind his barricade, he added: ”If he won't let you in, maybe the priest can take care of you at the Mission.”
”This here town of Kalvik is certainly overjoyed at our arrival,” said Fraser, ”ain't it?”
But his irate companion made no comment, whereat, sensing the anger behind his silence, the speaker, for once, failed to extemporize an answer to his own remark.
At the next stop they encountered the same gruff show of inhospitality, and all they could elicit from the shock-headed proprietor was another direction, in broken English, to try the Russian priest.
”I'll make one more try,” said Emerson, between his teeth, gratingly, as they swung out into the darkness a second time. ”If that doesn't succeed, then I'll take possession again. I won't be pa.s.sed on all night this way.”
”The 'buck' will certainly show us to the straw,” said ”Fingerless”
Fraser.
”The what?”
”The 'buck'--the sky-dog--oh, the priest!”
But when, a mile farther on, they drew up before a white pile surmounted by a dimly discerned Greek cross, no sign of life was to be seen, and their signals awakened no response.
”Gone!--and they knew it.”
The vicious manner in which Emerson handled his whip as he said the words betrayed his state of mind. Three weeks of unvarying hards.h.i.+p and toilsome travel had worn out both men, and rendered them well-nigh desperate. Hence they wasted no words when, for the fourth time, their eyes caught the welcome sight of a s.h.i.+ning radiance in the gloom of the gathering night.
The trail-weary team stopped of its own accord.
<script>