There were few lights showing in Lebanon or Manitou; but here and
there along the Sagalac was the fading glimmer of a camp-fire, and in
Tekewani’s reservation one light glowed softly like a star. It came
from a finely-made and chased safety-lantern given to Tekewani by the
Government, as a symbol of honour for having kept the braves quiet when
an Indian and half-breed rising was threatened; and to the powerless
chief it had become a token of his authority, the sign of the Great
White Mother’s approval. By day a spray of eagle’s feathers waved over
his tepee, but the gleam of the brass lantern every night was like a
sentry at the doorway of a monarch.
It was a solace to his wounded spirit; it allayed the smart of
subjection; made him feel himself a ruler in retirement, even as Gabriel
Druse was a self-ordained exile.
These two men, representing the primitive nomad life, had been drawn
together in friendship. So much so, that to Tekewani alone of all the
West, Druse gave his confidence and told his story. It came in the
springtime, when the blood of the young bucks was simmering and, the
ancient spell was working. There had preceded them generations of
hunters who had slain their thousands and their tens of thousands of
wild animals and the fowls of the air; had killed their enemies in
battle; had seized the comely women of their foes and made them their
own. No thrill of the hunter’s trail now drew off the overflow of
desire. In the days of rising sap, there were only the young maidens or
wives of their own tribe to pursue, and it lacked in glory. Also in the
springtime, Tekewani himself had his own trials, for in his blood the
old medicine stirred. His face turned towards the prairie North and the
mountain West where yet remained the hunter’s quarry; and he longed to
be away with rifle and gun, with his squaw and the papooses trailing
after like camp-followers, to eat the fruits of victory. But that could
not be; he must remain in the place the Great White Mother had reserved
for him; he and his braves must assemble, and draw their rations at the
appointed times and seasons, and grunt thanks to those who ruled over
them.
It was on one of these virginal days, when there was a restless stirring
among the young bucks, who smelled the wide waters, the pines and the
wild shrubs; who heard the cry of the loon on the lonely lake and
the whir of the wild duck’s wings, who answered to the phantom cry
of ancient war; it was on such a day that the two chiefs opened their
hearts to each other.
Near to the boscage on a little hill overlooking the great river,
Gabriel Druse had come upon Tekewani seated in the pine-dust, rocking to
and fro, and chanting a low, sorrowful refrain, with eyes fixed on the
setting sun. And the Ry of Rys understood, with the understanding
which only those have who live close to the earth, and also near to the
heavens of their own gods. He sat down beside the forlorn chief, and in
the silence their souls spoke to each other. There swept into the veins
of the Romany ruler something of the immitigable sadness of the Indian
chief; and, with a sudden premonition that he also was come to the
sunset of his life, his big nomad eyes sought the westering rim of the
heavens, and his breast heaved.
In that hour the two men declared themselves to each other, and Gabriel
Druse told Tekewani all that he had hidden from the people of the
Sagalac, and was answered in kind. It seemed to them that they were as
brothers who were one and who had parted in ages long gone; and having
met were to part and disappear once more, beginning still another trail
in an endless reincarnation.
“Brother,” said Tekewani, “it was while there was a bridge of land
between the continents at the North that we met. Again I see it. I
forgot it, but again I see. There was war, and you went upon one path
and I upon another, and we met no more under all the moons till now.”
“‘Dordi’, so it was and at such a time,” answered the Ry of Rys. “And
once more we will follow after the fire-flies which give no light to the
safe places but only lead farther into the night.”
Tekewani rocked to and fro again, muttering to himself, but presently he
said:
“We eat from the hands of those who have driven away the buffalo, the
deer, and the beaver; and the young bucks do naught to earn the joy of
women. They are but as lusting sheep, not as the wild-goat that chases
its mate over the places of death, till it comes upon her at last, and
calls in triumph over her as she kneels at his feet. So it is. Like tame
beasts we eat from the hand of the white man, and the white man leaves
his own camp where his own women are, and prowls in our camps, so that
not even our own women are left to us.”
It was then that Gabriel Druse learned of the hatred of Tekewani for
Felix Marchand, because of what he had done in the reservation, prowling
at night like a fox or a coyote in the folds.
They parted that hour, believing that the epoch of life in which they
were and the fortunes of time which had been or were to come, were but
turns of a wheel that still went on turning; and that whatever chanced
of good or bad fortune in the one span of being, might be repaired in
the next span, or the next, or the next; so, through their creed of
reincarnation, taking courage to face the failure of the life they now
lived. Not by logic or the teaching of any school had they reached
this revelation, but through an inner sense. They were not hopeful
and wondering and timid; they were only sure. Their philosophy, their
religion, whether heathen or human, was inborn. They had comfort in it
and in each other.
After that day Gabriel Druse always set a light in his window which
burned all night, answering to the lantern-light at the door of
Tekewani’s home--the lights of exile and of an alliance which had behind
it the secret influences of past ages and vanished peoples.
There came a night, however, when the light at the door of Tekewani’s
tepee did not burn. At sunset it was lighted, but long before midnight
it was extinguished. Looking out from the doorway of his home (it was
the night after the Orange funeral), Gabriel Druse, returned from his
new duties at Lebanon, saw no light in the Indian reservation. With
anxiety, he set forth in the shine of the moon to visit it.
Arrived at the chief’s tepee, he saw that the lantern of honour was
gone, and waking Tekewani, he brought him out to see. When the old
Indian knew his loss, he gave a harsh cry and stooped, and, gathering
a handful of dust from the ground, sprinkled it on his head. Then with
arms outstretched he cursed the thief who had robbed him of what had
been to him like a never-fading mirage, an illusion blinding his eyes to
the bitter facts of his condition.
To his mind all the troubles come to Lebanon and Manitou had had one
source; and now the malign spirit had stretched its hand to spoil those
already dispossessed of all but the right to live. One name was upon the
lips of both men, as they stood in the moonlight by Tekewani’s tepee.
“There shall be an end of this,” growled the Romany.
“I will have my own,” said Tekewani, with malediction on the thief who
had so shamed him.
Black anger was in the heart of Gabriel Druse as he turned again towards
his own home, and he was glad of what he had done to Felix Marchand at
the Orange funeral.