d
shot himself. Recalling his uncanny horror of the bend, he fancied
that he could trace madness in all his recent actions; but then he
remembered that his fear of the bend had been shared. He became
possessed of a new and more personal dread. What if in giving him the
warrant and showing him the portrait, he had told him too much--more
than his courage and honesty could bear? He rushed to the door of the
shack, and out to where the sleds and huskies had been left. One of
the sleds was gone; his own outfit lay scattered on the snow and the
gold had been taken. But he made a yet worse discovery, for of the
eight huskies, only two remained; Spurling's four gray dogs and the
two best of his own team were missing. He looked wildly round on the
great emptiness. The night pressed down on the earth, as though to
imprison it; the forest closed in on the river, menacing and silent;
and the river ran on, a level, untravelled roadway, from the west. He
shouted, and cursed, and called down God's vengeance on Spurling.
Then, for a moment he was quiet, and heard his own voice coming back
to him as an echo from the bend. His voice had tried to escape and was
returning to him because it could find no way out.

Crazily turning his face down-river, he shouted, "Hey, Strangeways,
may God damn Spurling."

Muffled, as if the dead man were answering him from underground, the
cry came back, "Hey, Strangeways, may God damn Spurling."

He covered his face with his hands and sat down in the snow laughing.
It was all a cruel jest. "Oh, the hypocrite! The hypocrite!" he
shrieked. "He came here hunted and I helped him with my life. He has
taken everything, and given me death."

Through his head ran maddeningly the scraps of the conversation he had
had with Peggy: "I'll strike for the south, and, when the hunt is
over, I'll send you word where you can join me." "You never will do
that." "And why not?" "Because you will be dead."

On all his thought, as if she were sitting at his side, her voice
broke in persistently, drearily and low-pitched reiterating, "Because
you will be dead. Because you will be dead."

A hard look came into his eyes; he ceased from his laughing and
whispering. Turning to the quarter behind his back from which he had
seemed to hear her speaking last, he said quietly, "But I shan't be
dead."

Then he rose up and entered the shack.

CHAPTER XXI

THE MURDER IN THE SKY

However lightly he travels and however h