Part 58 (1/2)
”G.o.d!” breathed a man, and turned away. ”It's his teeth!”
The yelling had ceased and men stared white faced. This was not the fighting they were used to; they understood only the quick, frenzied fighting of fury, where men pummel each other in blind rage, fighting close--as tigers fight--gouging and biting one another as they roll upon the ground locked in each other's grip.
The men gazed in awe, with a strange, unspoken terror creeping into their hearts, upon the vicious battering blows, the coldly gleaming eyes and smiling lips of the man who fought, not in any fume of pa.s.sion, but deliberately, smoothly, placing his terrific blows at will with a cold, deadly accuracy that smashed and tore.
Moncrossen rushed again.
”And now for the other things,” Bill continued; ”the attacks upon the defenseless girl--the attempted murder from ambush--and the starving of an old woman.”
Blow followed blow, until in the crowd men cried out sharply, and those who had watched a hundred fights turned away white lipped.
Moncrossen fought blindly now. His eyes were closed and his face one solid ma.s.s of blood. And still the blows fell. Smas.h.!.+ Smas.h.!.+ Smas.h.!.+ It was horrible--those deliberate, tearing blows, and the lips that smiled in cold, savage cruelty.
No blow landed on the point of the jaw, on the neck, on the heart, or the pit of the stomach--blows that bring the quiet of oblivion; but each landed with a cutting twist that ground into the flesh.
At last, with his face beaten to a crimson pulp, Moncrossen sagged to his knees, tried to rise, and crashed limp and lifeless to the ground.
And over him stood Bill Carmody, smiling down at the broken and battered wreck of the bad man of the logs.
Gradually the circle that surrounded the fighters broke into little groups of white-faced, silent men who shot nervous, inquiring glances into each other's faces and swore softly under their breath--the foolish, meaningless oaths of excitement.
Minutes pa.s.sed as Ethel stood gazing in terrible fascination from the big man to the thing on the ground at his feet. And as she looked, a hideous old squaw, apparently too weak to stand, struggled from her place of vantage among the feet of the men, and crawled to the limp, sprawled form.
Leaning close she peered into the shapeless features, crooning and gurgling, and emitting short, sharp whines of delight. Her beady eyes glittered wickedly, like the eyes of a snake, and the withered lips curled into a horrid grin, exposing the purple snag-toothed gums.
Suddenly the bent form knelt upright, the skeleton arms raised high above the tangle of gray-black hair, the thin, high-pitched voice quavered the words of a weird chant, the clawlike fingers twitched in short, jerky spasms, and the emaciated body swayed and weaved to the wild, barbaric rhythm of the chanted curse.
Terrible, blighting, the words were borne to the ears of the girl.
Bearded men looked, listened, and turned away, shuddering. The sun burst suddenly through a rift in the flying clouds, and his golden radiance fell incongruously upon the scene.
Ethel gazed as at some horrid phantasm--the rough men with gaudy s.h.i.+rts of red and blue and multicolored checks, standing in groups with tense, set faces--the other man--_her_ man--standing alone, silent and smiling, by the side of his blood-bathed victim, and the old crone, whose marcid form writhed in the swing of the thin-shrieked chant.
And then before she sensed that he had moved he stood before her. She raised her eyes to his in which the hard, cold gleam had given place to a look of intense longing, of infinite love, and the long-pent yearning of a soul.
He stretched his arms toward her and she saw that the bruised and swollen hands were stained with blood. Suddenly she realized that this man was her _husband_. A sickening fear overcame her, and she shrank, shuddering, from the touch of the blood-smeared hands.
A look of terror came into her face; she covered her eyes with her hands as if to shut out the horror of it all, and, turning, fled blindly--she knew not where.
As she ran there still sounded in her ears the words of the high, thin chant--the blighting curse of Yaga Tah.
CHAPTER LII
THE BIG MAN
Darkness settled over the North country. The sky had cleared, the wind gone down, and the air was soft and balmy with the feel of spring. A million stars sparkled overhead and above the intense blackness of the pines the moon rose, flooding the timberland with the mystery of her soft radiance.
Ethel tossed uneasily in her cot and glanced across to where her aunt and Mrs. Sheridan slumbered heavily. Then she arose and stood at the window gazing out on the moonlit clearing with its low, silent buildings, and clean-cut, black shadows.