Chapter XXII: The Man-Trap

Held to the ground by the fallen tree trunk, Dexter could make no move in self-defense. His own pistol was buttoned in its holster, strapped to the right side of his body. His right arm was broken, and it was impossible to reach far enough over the trunk with his left hand to touch the butt of his weapon. He waited, quiet and relaxed, his eyes clear and unwavering as he gazed into the bore of a blue steel barrel, pointed exactly at the center of his forehead.

There being no help for it, he could resign himself to fate, even to the indignity of death at a murderer's hands. After all, it did not matter much how, or by whom, the act was accomplished. He at least might dignify the last moment of life by meeting it unflinchingly. Singularly, the habits of an inquisitive mind persisted even now. He found himself wondering, almost with tranquillity, what this final adventure would be like. Would he have time to see the flash of fire and to feel the shock before the great darkness engulfed him? He would know in a second or two, and he waited with a shadow of a smile on his lips, watching with wide open eyes.

Crill's finger was tightening very slowly on the trigger, as though he was purposely prolonging a moment of cruel enjoyment. But as Dexter stared upward, observing the gradual muscular contraction of the plump hand that gripped the rifle, an expert knowledge of firearms told him that another pound of pressure must discharge the weapon. The last instant had come; but as he instinctively stopped breathing, he heard a shout behind him, a commotion of rushing feet, and a human figure flung itself upon the outlaw, and struck violently at his outstretched arm.

A shattering explosion echoed across the brookside, a bullet spattered bark along the tree trunk, and the rifle spun through the air and fell into the snow near Dexter's head. Gazing upward in astonishment, the corporal saw the dark-faced stranger standing between him and his intended murderer.

Utter silence held for two or three seconds after the reverberation of the report had died. Then, with a sudden snarling sound in his throat, Crill stooped to recover his gun, and swung back savagely to confront the man who had interfered.

"You--you--" he raged in a voice that nearly choked him. "I'll lay you alongside him, you--you--" He broke off for lack of breath, and glowered hot and menacing at the small man who dared to face him.

The newcomer measured the gross bulk before him, and quietly shook his head. "Every time I look at you, Crill, you come within a hair's breadth of dying," he remarked in a mild, drawling voice. "I can't stand you. If you didn't mean ready money to me, delivered on the hoof, I'd have put a bullet through you months ago. Stand aside!"

Without pausing to note the effect of his speech, he turned to look down at Dexter. But before he found anything to say, an interruption came in the form of the giant Doucet.

The half-breed strode to the foot of the slope, and pushed forward to take part in the argument. "I teenk lak Peenk, we keel 'im. Mebby we don' shoot 'em, eh? Dan we keek an' tromp 'im, w'at?" His saturnine face wrinkled for a moment in a sinister grin, and he glanced significantly at his heavy, nail-studded boots--weapons he had used before now with frightful effect, when his victims were sprawled helplessly before him.

The slight-built stranger surveyed the huge Doucet scornfully. "My, you're brave--you and Crill!" he observed with cutting irony. "You don't fear any policeman when you've got him crushed under a tree. One wants to shoot him, and the other's going to kick him to death." He turned suavely towards his third companion. "What method do you prefer, Croix?" he asked.

"Whatever way you say's right, Mr. Stark," answered Croix with a furtive glance from one of his comrades to another.

Dexter caught the name, and looked up curiously at the mild-spoken stranger. The man was Stark--presumably the Owen Stark whom Mudgett had mentioned--who owned the trapper's cabin farther up the valley, where Alison Rayne's brother was found last fall. And it needed no more than a glance at his confident black eyes and lean resolute jaw to mark him as the controlling mind and spirit among the scamps with whom he kept company.

Stark looked at each of his companions in turn, and his mouth curved faintly in a coldly whimsical smile that somehow was more formidable in quality than Crill's venomous scowl, or Doucet's swaggering ferocity, or the evil, hangdog demeanor of Norbert Croix.

"You're a pack of rats!" said Stark. "Get away from me!" Then, indicating that the incident was closed, he turned his back on his comrades, and bent forward to face Corporal Dexter.

"You're the last of your outfit, I take it," he remarked blandly. "There were three of you. One was a young constable who got his several months ago. Then there was the old man--Colonel Devreaux, wasn't he? I'm afraid he went out too, didn't he--one stormy day last October?"

In spite of the agony of the pain that throbbed and flamed through his body, Dexter's mind was still functioning. He had not forgotten that his own back trail led to the cave where Devreaux was hiding. If he could convince these men that the colonel was dead, they probably would not bother to follow his footsteps to Saddle Mountain. "A thirty caliber bullet through the lungs will finish almost any man," he stated. "I put Devreaux away under the ground that same evening."

"Lung shot, eh?" Stark nodded with the pleased air of a man who has been paid a compliment. "Not bad marksmanship at that distance. And in that hazy atmosphere, just before the snow struck us. But I was certain I had--I knew at the time that the final shot rang the bell."

He took off his mittens, brought paper and tobacco from his pocket, and casually rolled himself a cigarette. "You chaps annoyed us a bit last fall," he pursued in a voice of gentleness. "But we forgive you." He struck a match and puffed deeply for a moment, filling his lungs with smoke. "Policemen are something that can't be helped, I suppose. But it doesn't matter." He blew a lazy stream of smoke from his nostrils. "We can go our way as though you'd never happened, now that all three of you are dead."

Again Stark smiled his faint, quizzical smile, and for the first time Dexter felt a chill of horror seeping through his veins. Of his four enemies, this was the man to be feared: and as he looked into the cool, mocking eyes above him he realized that fate would have been more merciful if Crill or Doucet had been allowed to have his way.

Still refusing to show dismay, however, the corporal met Stark's glance with seeming unconcern. "You four traveling for the north pass?" he asked after a little pause.

"Looking for information?" Stark regarded him curiously for a moment, and silently laughed. "Yes. We're working along northward. Ought to be able to break our way through the snows two or three weeks from now. As long as I'm talking to a dead man there's no harm telling." He nodded amiably, apparently amused. "If you were still a policeman, it would have interested you to know more about me. I run what you might call a touring agency for murderers, and others who have to depart fast to save their necks. This Crill here, for instance--I've guaranteed to run him out of the country." He nodded towards the pink-cheeked outlaw. "I'll put him through safely, and then I'll collect the belt of gold he wears around his fat waist."

Crill stirred uneasily, and shot a lowering glance of suspicion at his smaller companion. Stark showed his teeth in a twisted grin. "It would give me pleasure to see this one hanging," he remarked genially, "but business before pleasure is my motto. Crill is scared all the time that I'm going to knock him off and take his money ahead of time. But I don't really think I shall. Never kill a waddling goose for his belt of gold. If I let Crill live, he'll probably write to his friends from his hiding place abroad, and tell them that I played fair. I'm counting on him to recommend me to new clients. Honesty always pays when you're building up business."

As Dexter listened to the man's cynical remarks, it occurred to him that while the mood of frankness was on he might receive a truthful answer to the question that had dwelt uppermost in his thoughts through the long winter months. "What became of the girl--Miss Rayne?" he asked.

Stark eyed him slantwise for a space, and his face was furrowed for an instant with lines of mocking humor. "Oh, yes," he said, "the only one the three of you succeeded in catching. A girl! And even she got away from you."

"What happened to her?" Dexter persisted in a faint voice.

"We haven't seen her all winter," answered Stark with a shrug of unconcern. "Maybe she got through the storm, and found shelter somewhere. Maybe she didn't. Perhaps she is dead." He laughed unpleasantly. "Crill saw her that afternoon, and like you he's been worrying about her. Wanted to go hunt for her. Rut I wouldn't let him out of my sight. I'm keeping my eyes on that belt of money."

Dexter's stoical mask had left him for a moment, and the intensity of his mental torment was revealed in his drawn features. Stark grinned at him tauntingly. "If she's dead you'll meet her shortly," he remarked; and then he turned abruptly to face his companions.

"As for the three of you," he observed, "you're a bunch of half-wits. Not one of you has brains enough to think ahead of the moment. Suppose this man were left here with a bullet in him or the marks of hobnails on him? Other policemen will be in here as soon as the way is open, and if they found him like that, they'd go after us like a pack of wolves.

"As it stands now," he pursued quietly, "nobody's had a chance to find out much about us. Of the three policemen who came into this country last fall, two are out of sight under the ground, and they'll probably never be found. As for the third, we're going to make certain that he doesn't bear evidence against us."

"Yeh!" interrupted Crill with a surly stare. "But what's to stop us planting this one too?"

"Nothing," returned Stark in his genial drawl. "Only in my opinion it's better to leave one of them to be found, apparently the victim of a timber wreck. Such accidents often happen in these mountains. If the police discover one of their three men laid out like this, they're apt to think that the hazards of winter travel took off the other two as well. They'll search around a while, and then give it up, figuring probably that all three have perished by accident. And nobody can blame us." He glanced down coolly at the stricken officer. "What's your opinion?" he inquired.

Dexter lay with eyes half closed, listening to the cold-blooded discussion. His enemies seemed to be agreed on the question of his death; they differed only as to the manner of execution. But somehow he was not greatly interested in the argument. As long as the end was foredoomed, it did not matter much how the final act was done. He met Stark's gaze, and smiled wanly. "I agree with you," he said. "Your chances of life are much better if my comrades are kept from guessing the truth."

"But wan leetle knock on de head!" cut in Doucet eagerly. He illustrated with an imaginary club wielded in his great sinewy hands. "_Wham! Voila tout!_" He nodded vigorously. "Dey fin' him wid skull smash. Den dey t'ink de tree she hit 'im so. De snow all melt before anybody come. No foot track lef' from us. Nobody suspec'. An' nobody bodder us ever any more. Is it not so?"

"No!" said Stark decisively. "I owe this man a private accounting, and it's for me to decide the form of payment. And he's not going to die quick and easy."

Stark's air of careless indifference was suddenly cast aside, and as he bent over the policeman, malevolence and hatred gleamed openly in his deep-sunk eyes. "I've been waiting, hoping for a chance like this for months and months," he declared, his voice as frigid and brittle as tinkling ice in a glass. "My only fear was that I wouldn't get you alive. But I have! And for what you've done to me, I'm going to make you pay to your last ounce of endurance, to the last breath you've got!"

Dexter gazed at the man in speechless wonder, unable to account for the venomous outburst. As far as he recalled, he and Stark had never met before, and he could not imagine what he had ever done to call upon himself the malice and detestation so unexpectedly revealed in the bloodless face above him. As he looked up in mute questioning the notion struck him that the man had gone suddenly insane. Stark apparently read the thought in his mind.

"No!" said Stark, tense and hoarse, his affected urbanity of a moment before lost in a demoniacal scowl. "I'm not crazy. You're Corporal David Dexter--and you're the one I've wanted. If you don't know why, I won't give you the satisfaction of being told. Think back--maybe you'll remember!" His lips drew back from his white teeth, and his laugh echoed hideously. "You'll have time to do plenty of thinking before you finish."

With a stiff movement, as though he found it difficult to hold himself in hand, he dropped on one knee and extracted the corporal's pistol from his holster. "You might manage to reach it after we're gone and put a bullet through your head," he grated. "Nothing so nice as that for you!"

With swift, nervous hands Stark searched through the policeman's pockets, and possessed himself of all spare cartridges, hunting knife, match safe, and notebook and pencils. "Just to make sure you don't scribble any farewell messages," he remarked.

The pipe and tobacco pouch, he did not bother to take, and in his haste he accidentally overlooked the small revolver Dexter had kept as evidence from the murder cabin, and which he carried buttoned in the right hand pocket of his stag shirt. With the fallen tree pressing upon his chest and right shoulder, Dexter could not have reached the weapon if he tried; nevertheless he took a strange satisfaction in the knowledge that he had not been stripped entirely of firearms.

Stark finished his rummaging, and stood up; and his eyes glittered as he looked upon his helpless enemy. "Unless somebody takes that tree off you, you're pinned there forever," he declared. "It'll be three weeks anyhow before any of your people can get into this valley, and you'll pass out before that. But you'll go slow. Hunger may do it, or exposure, or blood poisoning from broken bones, or maybe the beasts will get you." He sucked in his lips with morbid anticipation. "I heard a pack of timber wolves howling a couple of nights ago. We don't know how the end will come, but for you there's no escape. And you can lie there with the nerve oozing out and the fear creeping on--hours and days of it, perhaps--and all that time you can be telling yourself that Owen Stark did this thing to you."

The man stooped to unfasten the policeman's pack, and slung the weight over his own shoulder. He regarded Dexter for a moment with a smile that lacked all human semblance. Then he shouldered Dexter's provision pack, beckoned his companions, and turned away. "Come on!" he commanded. He moved off at a brisk pace along the course of the thawing brooklet, and Crill and Doucet trailed silently after him.