“So you see, Catherine, I have not only put my own fate in your hands, but that of the old bus as well. I have not practiced half-measures.”
“Just that—my liberty and honor. Suppose you were to let people know that I am here—that a stranger had come here by air? What would become of me? I might run into the woods and hide—and starve. The game would be played out and ended, whatever I did.”
“But you have never thought that there was any danger of such a thing!”
“Never. Not for a moment. But what right had I to treat you like this—to tell you the truth about myself and then throw myself on your mercy? You must think me a poor thing.”
“You have not asked for mercy from me; and you have told me that any man of spirit would have done what you did.”
They returned to the barn-yard in silence. There they lit the lantern.
“Don’t forget to put on the old clothes,” she said. “And please give me that coat now. I will take good care of it, ribbons and all; and I will give it back to you when you want to fly away from here.”
“I have neither the petrol nor the desire for flight,” he returned. “There are letters in the pockets, so please hide it securely.”
He took off the jacket, folded it and laid it over her arm.
“Good night,” she said, and hurried away.
Akerley lay awake for hours on a blanket spread on a mattress of innumerable springs—a ton or more of last year’s timothy, bluejoint and clover. He had air enough, though it was still and warm; for one of the wide doors stood open and the fingers could be thrust anywhere between the horizontal poles of which the sides and ends of the barn were constructed. Only the roof was weather-tight.
His thoughts kept him awake; and yet he let them deal only with the immediate past and the immediate to-morrow. He did not think backward or forward beyond this forest-farm. What was the use of brooding over the past or dreaming of the future? After much reflection, he decided on the character in which he was to emerge from the woods into the clearing and encounter that formidable old Gaspard Javet. He would come as a backwoodsman from the upper waters of the main river, two hundred miles or more away to the west and south, looking for new land and seclusion. He had known that country well, years ago. This was a part that he could act with a degree of interest and realism; and he would explain it to the old man—sooner or later, as circumstances determined—that the game-wardens of his old stamping-grounds wanted him in connection with a little matter of spearing salmon at night by the light of a torch. The confession of a crime against the Game Laws was not likely to prejudice the old woodsman against him; and this was a particularly mild offense. He knew enough of back-countrymen to believe that his story would excite Gaspard’s sympathy—if Gaspard were true to type.