"Five years." The man sighed again. "And you, I presume, wish to know
about it, being naturally curious, and this a sufficiently strange
situation, and all that. But it's not much. I came in from Edmonton
after musk-ox, and like Pike and the rest of them, had my mischances,
only I lost my party and outfit. Starvation, hardship, the regular
tale, you know, sole survivor and all that, till I crawled into
Tantlatch's, here, on hand and knee."
"Five years," Van Brunt murmured retrospectively, as though turning
things over in his mind.
"Five years on February last. I crossed the Great Slave early in
May--"
"And you are ... Fairfax?" Van Brunt interjected.
The man nodded.
"Let me see ... John, I think it is, John Fairfax."
"How did you know?" Fairfax queried lazily, half-absorbed in curling
smoke-spirals upward in the quiet air.
"The papers were full of it at the time. Prevanche--"
"Prevanche!" Fairfax sat up, suddenly alert. "He was lost in the Smoke
Mountains."
"Yes, but he pulled through and came out."
Fairfax settled back again and resumed his smoke-spirals. "I am glad
to hear it," he remarked reflectively. "Prevanche was a bully fellow
if he _did_ have ideas about head-straps, the beggar. And he pulled
through? Well, I'm glad."
Five years ... the phrase drifted recurrently through Van Brunt's
thought, and somehow the face of Emily Southwaithe seemed to rise up
and take form before him. Five years ... A wedge of wild-fowl honked
low overhead and at sight of the encampment veered swiftly to the
north into the smouldering sun. Van Brunt could not follow them. He
pulled out his watch. It was an hour past midnight. The northward
clouds flushed bloodily, and rays of sombre-red shot southward, firing
the gloomy woods with a lurid radiance. The air was in breathless
calm, not a needle quivered, and the least sounds of the camp were
distinct and clear as trumpet calls. The Crees and _voyageurs_ felt
the spirit of it and mumbled in dreamy undertones, and the cook
unconsciously subdued the clatter of pot and pan. Somewhere a child
was crying, and from the depths of the forest, like a silver
thread, rose a woman's voice in mournful chant:
"O-o-o-o-o-o-a-haa-ha-a-ha-aa-a-a, O-o-o-o-o-o-a-ha-a-ha-a."
Van Brunt shivered and rubbed the backs of his hands briskly.
"And they gave me up for dead?" his companion asked slowly.
"Well, you never came back, so your friends--"
"Promptly forgot." Fairfax laughed harshly, defiantly.
"Why didn't you come out?"
"Partly disinclination, I suppose, and partly because of circumstances
over which I had no control. You see, Tantlatch, here, was down with a
broken leg when I made his acquaintance,--a nasty fracture,--and I
set it for him and got him into shape. I stayed some time, getting my
strength back. I was the first white man he had seen, and of course I
seemed very wise and showed his people no end of things. Coached them
up in military tactics, among other things, so that they conquered the
four other tribal villages, (which you have not yet seen), and came to
rule the land. And they naturally grew to think a good deal of me, so
much so that when I was ready to go they wouldn't hear of it. Were
most hospitable, in fact. Put a couple of guards over me and watched
me day and night. And then Tantlatch offered me inducements,--in a
sense, inducements,--so to say, and as it didn't matter much one way
or the other, I reconciled myself to remaining."
"I knew your brother at Freiburg. I am Van Brunt."
Fairfax reached forward impulsively and shook his hand. "You were
Billy's friend, eh? Poor Billy! He spoke of you often."
"Rum meeting place, though," he added, casting an embracing glance
over the primordial landscape and listening for a moment to the
woman's mournful notes. "Her man was clawed by a bear, and she's
taking it hard."
"Beastly life!" Van Brunt grimaced his disgust. "I suppose, after five
years of it, civilization will be sweet? What do you say?"
Fairfax's face took on a stolid expression. "Oh, I don't know. At
least they're honest folk and live according to their lights. And then
they are amazingly simple. No complexity about them, no thousand and
one subtle ramifications to every single emotion they experience. They
love, fear, hate, are angered, or made happy, in common, ordinary, and
unmistakable terms. It may be a beastly life, but at least it is easy
to live. No philandering, no dallying. If a woman likes you, she'll
not be backward in telling you so. If she hates you, she'll tell you
so, and then, if you feel inclined, you can beat her, but the thing
is, she knows precisely what you mean, and you know precisely what
she means. No mistakes, no misunderstandings. It has its charm, after
civilization's fitful fever. Comprehend?"
"No, it's a pretty good life," he continued, after a pause; "good
enough for me, and I intend to stay with it."
Van Brunt lowered his head in a musing manner, and an imperceptible
smile played on his mouth. No philandering, no dallying, no
misunderstanding. Fairfax also was taking it hard, he thought, just
because Emily Southwaithe had been mistakenly clawed by a bear. And
not a bad sort of a bear, either, was Carlton Southwaithe.
"But you are coming along with me," Van Brunt said deliberately.
"No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are."
"Life's too easy here, I tell you." Fairfax spoke with decision.
"I understand everything, and I am understood. Summer and winter
alternate like the sun flashing through the palings of a fence, the
seasons are a blur of light and shade, and time slips by, and life
slips by, and then ... a wailing in the forest, and the dark. Listen!"
He held up his hand, and the silver thread of the woman's sorrow rose
through the silence and the calm. Fairfax joined in softly.
"O-o-o-o-o-o-a-haa-ha-a-ha-aa-a-a, O-o-o-o-o-o-a-ha-a-ha-a," he sang.
"Can't you hear it? Can't you see it? The women mourning? the funeral
chant? my hair white-locked and patriarchal? my skins wrapped in rude
splendor about me? my hunting-spear by my side? And who shall say it
is not well?"
Van Brunt looked at him coolly. "Fairfax, you are a damned fool. Five
years of this is enough to knock any man, and you are in an unhealthy,
morbid condition. Further, Carlton Southwaithe is dead."
Van Brunt filled his pipe and lighted it, the while watching slyly
and with almost professional interest. Fairfax's eyes flashed on the
instant, his fists clenched, he half rose up, then his muscles relaxed
and he seemed to brood. Michael, the cook, signalled that the meal was
ready, but Van Brunt motioned back to delay. The silence hung heavy,
and he fell to analyzing the forest scents, the odors of mould and
rotting vegetation, the resiny smells of pine cones and needles, the
aromatic savors of many camp-smokes. Twice Fairfax looked up, but said
nothing, and then:
"And ... Emily ...?"
"Three years a widow; still a widow."
Another long silence settled down, to be broken by Fairfax finally
with a naïve smile. "I guess you're right, Van Brunt. I'll go along."
"I knew you would." Van Brunt laid his hand on Fairfax's shoulder. "Of
course, one cannot know, but I imagine--for one in her position--she
has had offers--"
"When do you start?" Fairfax interrupted.
"After the men have had some sleep. Which reminds me, Michael is
getting angry, so come and eat."
After supper, when the Crees and _voyageurs_ had rolled into their
blankets, snoring, the two men lingered by the dying fire. There was
much to talk about,--wars and politics and explorations, the doings
of men and the happening of things, mutual friends, marriages,
deaths,--five years of history for which Fairfax clamored.
"So the Spanish fleet was bottled up in Santiago," Van Brunt was
saying, when a young woman stepped lightly before him and stood by
Fairfax's side. She looked swiftly into his face, then turned a
troubled gaze upon Van Brunt.
"Chief Tantlatch's daughter, sort of princess," Fairfax explained,
with an honest flush. "One of the inducements, in short, to make me
stay. Thom, this is Van Brunt, friend of mine."
Van Brunt held out his hand, but the woman maintained a rigid repose
quite in keeping with her general appearance. Not a line of her face
softened, not a feature unbent. She looked him straight in the eyes,
her own piercing, questioning, searching.
"Precious lot she understands," Fairfax laughed. "Her first
introduction, you know. But as you were saying, with the Spanish fleet
bottled up in Santiago?"
Thom crouched down by her husband's side, motionless as a bronze
statue, only her eyes flashing from face to face in ceaseless search.
And Avery Van Brunt, as he talked on and on, felt a nervousness under
the dumb gaze. In the midst of his most graphic battle descriptions,
he would become suddenly conscious of the black eyes burning into him,
and would stumble and flounder till he could catch the gait and go
again. Fairfax, hands clasped round knees, pipe out, absorbed, spurred
him on when he lagged, and repictured the world he thought he had
forgotten.
One hour passed, and two, and Fairfax rose reluctantly to his feet.
"And Cronje was cornered, eh? Well, just wait a moment till I run over
to Tantlatch. He'll be expecting you, and I'll arrange for you to see
him after breakfast. That will be all right, won't it?"
He went off between the pines, and Van Brunt found himself staring
into Thom's warm eyes. Five years, he mused, and she can't be more
than twenty now. A most remarkable creature. Being Eskimo, she should
have a little flat excuse for a nose, and lo, it is neither broad nor
flat, but aquiline, with nostrils delicately and sensitively formed
as any fine lady's of a whiter breed--the Indian strain somewhere, be
assured, Avery Van Brunt. And, Avery Van Brunt, don't be nervous, she
won't eat you; she's only a woman, and not a bad-looking one at that.
Oriental rather than aborigine. Eyes large and fairly wide apart, with
just the faintest hint of Mongol obliquity. Thom, you're an anomaly.
You're out of place here among these Eskimos, even if your father is
one. Where did your mother come from? or your grandmother? And Thom,
my dear, you're a beauty, a frigid, frozen little beauty with Alaskan
lava in your blood, and please don't look at me that way.
He laughed and stood up. Her insistent stare disconcerted him. A dog
was prowling among the grub-sacks. He would drive it away and place
them into safety against Fairfax's return. But Thom stretched out a
detaining hand and stood up, facing him.
"You?" she said, in the Arctic tongue which differs little from
Greenland to Point Barrow. "You?"
And the swift expression of her face demanded all for which "you"
stood, his reason for existence, his presence there, his relation to
her husband--everything.
"Brother," he answered in the same tongue, with a sweeping gesture to
the south. "Brothers we be, your man and I."