The Danger Mark

She turned on her side toward him, looking him in the eyes:

"Does it matter?"

"No," he said, smiling.

She reached out her arms; they settled close around his neck, clung for a second's passionate silence, released him and covered her flushed face, all but the mouth. Under them his lips met hers.

The next instant she was on her knees, pink-cheeked, alert, ears straining in the wind.

"Miller is coming back very fast!" she whispered to her lover. "I believe he has good news!"

Miller was coming fast, holding out in one hand something red and gray—something that dangled and flapped as he strode—something that looked horrible and raw.

"Damn him!" said the old man fiercely, "no wonder he ain't a-feedin'! Look at this, Miss Seagrave. There's more of it below—a hull mess of it in the snow."

"It's a big strip of deer-hide—all raw and bleeding!" faltered the girl. "What in the world has happened?"

"His work," said Miller grimly.

"The—the big boar?"

"Yes'm. The deer yard over there. He sneaked in on 'em last night and this doe must have got stuck in a drift. And that devil caught her and pulled her down and tore her into bits. Why, the woods is all scattered with shreds o' hide like this! I wish to God you or Mr. Mallett could get one crack at him! I do, by thunder! Yes'm!"

But it was already too dusky among the trees to sight a rifle. In silence they strapped up the coats, fastened on snow-shoes, and moved out along the bare spur of the mountain, where there was still daylight in the open, although the thickening snow made everything gray and vague.

Here and there a spectral tree loomed up among the rocks; a white hare's track, paralleled by the big round imprints of a lynx, ran along the unseen path they followed as Miller guided them toward Westgate.

Later, outlined in the white waste, ancient apple-trees appeared, gnarled relics of some long-abandoned clearing; and, as they passed, Duane chanced to glance across the rocks to the left.

At first he thought he saw something move, but began to make up his mind that he was deceived.

Noticing that he had halted, Geraldine came back, and then Miller returned to where he stood, squinting through the falling flakes in the vague landscape beyond.

"It moved; I seen it," whispered Miller hoarsely.

"It's a deer," motioned Geraldine; "it's too big for anything else."

For five minutes in perfect silence they watched the gray, flat forms of scrub and rock; and Duane was beginning to lose faith in everybody's eyes when, without warning, a huge, colourless shape detached itself from the flat silhouettes and moved leisurely out into the open.

There was no need to speak; trembling slightly, he cleared his rifle sight of snow, steadied his nerves, raised the weapon, and fired.

A horrid sort of scream answered the shot; the boar lurched off among the rocks, and after him at top speed ran Duane and Miller, while Geraldine, on swift skis, sped eastward like the wind to block retreat to the mountain. She heard Duane's rifle crack again, then again; heard a heavy rush in the thicket in front of her, lifted her rifle, fired, was hurled sideways on the rocks, and knew no more until she unclosed her bewildered eyes in her lover's arms.

A sharp pain shot through her; she gasped, turned very white, and lay with wide eyes and parted lips staring at Duane.

Suddenly a penetrating aroma filled her lungs; with all her strength she pushed away the flask at her lips.

"No! No! Not that! I will not, Duane!"

"Dear," he said unsteadily, "you are very badly hurt. We are trying to carry you back. You must let me give you this–"

"No," she sobbed, "I will not! Duane—I—" Pain made her faint; her grasp on his arm tightened convulsively; with a supreme effort she struck the flask out of his hand and dropped back unconscious.

CHAPTER XXIII

SINE DIE

The message ran:

"My sister badly hurt in an accident; concussion, intermittent consciousness. We fear spinal and internal injury. What train can you catch?

    Scott Seagrave."

Which telegram to Josiah Bailey, M.D., started that eminent general practitioner toward Roya-Neh in company with young Dr. Goss, a surgeon whose brilliancy and skill did not interfere with his self-restraint when there were two ways of doing things.

They were to meet in an hour at the 5.07 train; but before Dr. Bailey set out for the rendezvous, and while his man was still packing his suit-case, the physician returned to his office, where a patient waited, head hanging, picking nervously at his fingers, his prominent, watery eyes fixed on vacancy.

The young man neither looked up nor stirred when the doctor entered and reseated himself, picking up a pencil and pad. He thought a moment, squinted through his glasses, and continued writing the prescription which the receipt of the telegram from Roya-Neh had interrupted.

When he had finished he glanced over the slip of paper, removed his gold-rimmed reading spectacles, folded them, balanced them thoughtfully in the palm of his large and healthy hand, considering the young fellow before him with grave, far-sighted eyes:

"Stuyvesant," he said, "this prescription is not going to cure you. No medicine that I can give you is going to perform any such miracle unless you help yourself. Nothing on earth that man has invented, or is likely to invent, can cure your disease unless by God's grace the patient pitches in and helps himself. Is that plain talk?"

Quest nodded and reached shakily for the prescription; but the doctor withheld it.

"You asked for plain talk; are you listening to what I'm saying?"

"Oh, hell, yes," burst out Quest; "I'm going to pull myself together. Didn't I tell you I would? But I've got to get a starter first, haven't I? I've got to have something to key me up first. I've explained to you that it's this crawling, squirming movement on the backs of my hands that I can't stand for. I want it stopped; I'll take anything you dope out; I'll do any turn you call for–"

"Very well. I've told you to go to Mulqueen's. Go now!"

"All right, doctor. Only they're too damn rough with a man. All right; I'll go. I did go last winter, and look where I am now!" he snarled suddenly. "Have I got to get up against all that business again?"

"You came out in perfectly good shape. It was up to you," said the doctor, coldly using the vernacular.

"How was it up to me? You all say that! How was it? I understood that if I cut it out and went up there and let that iron-fisted Irishman slam me around, that I'd come out all right. And the first little baby-drink I hit began the whole thing again!"

"Why did you take it? You didn't have to."

"I wanted it," retorted Quest angrily.

"Not badly enough to make self-control impossible. That's what you went up there for, to get back self-control. You got it but didn't use it. Do you think there is any sort of magic serum Mulqueen or I or anybody under Heaven can pump into you that will render you immune from the consequences of making an alcohol sewer of yourself?"

"I certainly supposed I could come out and drink like a gentleman," said the young man sullenly.

"Drink like a—what? A gentleman? What's that? What's drinking like a gentleman? I don't know what it is. You either drink alcohol or you don't; you either swill it or you don't. Anybody can do either. I'm not aware that either is peculiar to a gentleman. But I know that both are peculiar to fools."

Quest muttered, picking his fingers, and cast an ugly side look at the physician.