THE GHOST TRAIL
The Indian would rather not be fed from the Great Horn Spoon of the
Pale-face. North of the Medicine Line we have kept faith with him,
in cold frugality and aggravating meanness. Southward in the Land of
Promises we showed him the whole art and practice of Humbug,
sometimes massacred a tribe or so, were always liable to break out,
and yet had generous moods or even dealt a little sunshine now and
then to warm starved hearts. The Indian likes Canada least.
We wear hats, not for an occasional ceremony, but all the time, as
though we never desisted from making magic. That is uncanny, not
quite human.
The Indian likes a fight as much as anybody, and afterwards a scalp
is the very best trophy. But he always took that trophy in war, not,
like the white frontiersman, in peace, or for fun, or as a collector
of curiosities. In other ways, too, the white man is ferocious.
When, on a hard trip, the Indians are done for and lie down to die,
the white man gets up and kicks them. I have done that myself. The
white man's purpose goes on until he is dead, and afterwards. He is
much fiercer even than the poor embittered Apaches. He is fierce in
cold blood. He laughs.
All this is to illustrate the emotions of Falls-in-two,
Wags-his-tail, and Last-one-to-swim-home-with-fodder, the three best
canoe men of the Kutenais.
They did not like the white man Storms-all-of-a-sudden, who kept two
of them at the paddles, one resting, and worked without sleep himself
for seventy hours on end. When he caught them trying to cook a meal,
he kicked the fire out. Of course, they could kill him easily, but
when they rejoined the tribe Two Bits would have a few words to say
about that. Brave they were to a fault, but when old Two Bits
"turned her wolf loose," naught could avail but absence.
A white man wears a hat and can work without rest or food, such being
his sun-power; but an over-strained Indian's nerve breaks, and,
though he may seem to get well, he will not live long afterwards.
So, at the cataract from which he had his name, Falls-in-two
explained this mystery to Storms-all-of-a-sudden. It made Storm
worse than ever.
At the upper portage the three Indians prayed that the sun would burn
him and powder him up for black face-paint. Most certainly the
prayer had some effect, for the heat became extreme, and in the late
afternoon when they reached the place where the city of Nelson
stands, the white man, so said Wags-his-tail, just fell down dead.
They were too tired to help. They let him stay dead until midnight.
* * * * * * *
Storm had lost himself among heaps of clinkers and beds of cinders.
There were drifts of ashes flung by an icy wind in the gray gloom, a
gale of ashes blowing through his body, cold which wrenched his
heart, clutched his throat, strangled him. He could not find Rain's
enemy, the man who had ruined his wife, and robbed her of her honor.
The plain reached away forever without shelter or refuge or any hope.
There was no hope. There was no life in him or warmth except from
the burning of murderous hatred for Rain's enemy.
"I have a soul," he shouted, "to offer in exchange if I may have my
enemy. Give me my enemy!"
There was no answer to his cry, no echo from the desert, only more
furious wind, and deepening of gray darkness, drift in which he
floundered, sinking, cold beyond endurance.
Again he shouted, offering his soul for help in the finding of Rain's
enemy.
That time he heard the echo, derisive, hollow, flung by unseen
cliffs, crashing from wall to wall, from height to height, far up to
summits remote, and empty silence. Presently his knee struck a chain
suspended in the ash drift. Its cold tore the skin from his hands,
but he could not lower it to climb over or lift it to get under. He
hauled himself along by the chain as though it were a life line,
knowing that the name of it was Despair. And by the chain of Despair
he came at last to the foot of the cliffs, just where a pathway went
up, broad, of easy gradient, quartering the precipice. He knew that
the name of that path was Hope, but he could not tell whither it led.
Only it saved him from the gale of drifting ashes, and it seemed to
lead him away from Hate, wherein there is no shelter, or succor, or
deliverance. He went on a long way, but always the path narrowed,
shrinking against the cliffs; and whereas it had been easy, it was
now steep, aye, and perilous, for it shelved to the edge, of slippery
loose flakes which slithered over and fell. He stood breathless,
listening for the stones to reach the bottom to reassure him, but
they fell, and fell without end. Now he dared go no farther upon
that narrow shelving way lest he should miss a foothold in the dark,
to slither as the stones did, and go suddenly mad, to leap, turning
over and over in Space, falling into the Silence. He would have gone
down the path, but that he dared not turn round. He went on,
clinging to the wall, peering into the gloom, looking for footholds.
So Thunder Feather found him, and barred his path. She said that
Rain lay up yonder at the point of death. She must come down this
trail to find Storm because he had failed her, in her extremity had
failed her.
The words were echoed by clanging walls, with cap and crash of
thundering calls and answers, far up the heights until the sound was
lost in Silence.
And in the disorder of her grief the mother railed at Storm. "You
think yourself a man," she cried, "a warrior!" The echoes crashed
and thundered to every word. "Your woman bids you keep away from
your lodge these three snows past, and you obey, you cur! What woman
ever made could love or reverence a thing that obeys her like a dog
at the lodge door!
"Three winters married and never seen your woman! O craven dog-face!
The squaw is master in your lodge, and you whimpering outside, unfit,
unworthy to enter, not man enough to go in, Betrayer of Manhood. He
arms a tribe with guns to protect his woman's mountains, while he
dare not guard her honor."
She leaned forward, and spat in his face.
"It's just as well," she said, "you were not there to meet that
warrior, to spoil your woman's aim when she launched the arrow, or
afterwards where she finished him.
"He lies outside the lodge writhing, moaning, there in his blood,
craving for water. I sat unseen, invisible, beside him, making sure
of his agony, drinking his anguish. Rain's vengeance has not failed,
as yours fails, coward. Her vengeance is the one thing saved, the
only thing which has not failed in our downfall, all that we have
left. He will never have power to harm another woman.
"And so you think you'll climb this trail up to the Hunting Grounds
among the blessed dead! You will, but it will be a land of strangers
for such as you, who shirked."
Father and Uncle Joey stood behind her, and they also jeered.
In all Storm's life that was the moment of deepest humiliation, for
while he knelt upon the ledge, broken with misery, Thunder Feather,
his chief assailant, turned on these evil spirits like a tigress.
She terrified them, driving them away.
Afterwards when she came back, she crouched down on a jutting crag,
covered her head with her robe, and mourned for the overthrow of all
she had loved on earth.
"What brought you here?" Storm asked, for his heart went out to her.
"I'm finding the trail," she said, "to make it easier for Rain when
she dies, and comes here--she who avenged her honor. I will set up
her lodge, and bide with her."
Not sin, but love, had brought this unhappy spirit down to Hell, love
upside down, grotesquely changed to hate, to venomous curses and
exulting vengeance, but love nevertheless, love eternal, love
triumphant. Ignoring his own misery, thrusting self away, Storm had
the heart to pity Thunder Feather, sought clumsily enough and
hopelessly to give her the comfort which he lacked himself.
How strange it was that, all unnoticed, humble mosses grew in the
cracks of the rock, putting forth tiny forlorn green flowers. There
was even a trickle of water flowing across the shelf.
Why, there was light enough now to see far up the gray, stupendous
walls on either side, although the abyss beneath was hardly visible.
The water caught the light, and Storm saw it, letting the trickle
flow into his hands, although his thirst had become so terrible that
he could not keep still, but let it run away between his fingers. He
tried again, but this time to get water for the woman. She cursed
him, cross-grained as ever, but she drank, and went on cursing his
attempts to give her comfort where there could be none. She tried to
drive him away, but he was busy drinking and took no notice. She was
glad in her heart that he stayed, that he still tried to give her
something to hope for. If she had come down the trail, it must be
possible for him to help her up again.
It was then that Catherine came, calling for Thunder Feather, feeling
her way down into the gloom of the abyss. She found the woman at her
son's feet, mourning.
Storm looked up wondering at his mother's radiance, which lighted the
gray walls on either side. Then she bent down and kissed him on the
forehead.
"Silly old Thunder Feather!" she said with all the clear-cut, brisk
decisiveness of the trained nurse, "talketh nonsense and knoweth it
is rubbish, and grinneth when found out, as she doth now. Ugh! Look
at her!"
Thunder Feather tried to conceal the grin under her robe.
"Pay thee no heed," said Catherine. "For, if she meant a tenth part
of that which she saith, her portion would be perdition, albeit her
spirit dwelleth in Rain's tent."
Storm dared not ask about Rain.
"I've just left Rain," said mother, "asleep and asking for thee.
Thou must not come, son."
"Why?"
"Because if thee comes in the spirit she will leave her body to meet
thee, and then she won't get back again. Dost thee want her to
croak? Then don't be silly. Come in thy body like a man, so that
thy wife seeth thee in the flesh and cleaveth to the earth-life for
thy sake. The poor thing prays for death. Make her pray for life.
Now promise. S'elp you Bob!"
"S'elp me Bob."
"That's right." The sensible old woman turned briskly to Thunder
Feather. "Dost gloat on Hell, eh? Come back to thy child or--or
I'll smack thee black and blue."
The Indian spirit got up, favored Storm with a demure wink, and
meekly followed Catherine back to duty.
* * * * * * *
Despite his mother's comforting words, the taunts of Thunder Feather
had bitten so very deeply that Storm awakened, yelling. He raved to
the three Indians that he had failed his wife in her need, and they,
supposing him to be unmarried, thought he had gone crazy.
Ill as he was from yesterday's touch of the sun, he roused them again
at daybreak, and drove them heartlessly on that last day's journey of
seventy miles by water. Yet as a gale breaks into squalls, and flaws
into calm, so he became inconstant, with moods of furious haste
followed by hours when he dared not go on. He might not find Rain
alive. So at the outlet of the main lake he let his men cook
breakfast; at the Warm Springs they all had a bath; at Kaslo Point
landed for supper; and it was not until night was far advanced that
they came dead weary to the head of navigation on Hamill Creek.
After a dreamless night Storm found himself fit for travel. At dawn
he bathed, said his prayers, cooked breakfast, and finished eating by
the time the three Indians awakened. They sat up, each in his robe,
and offered thanks to Morning Star that they were to go no farther
with this madman. They watched him stow his New Testament and some
jerked buffalo beef into the robe which he packed and slung by
shoulder cords upon his back.
"Chiefs," observed Falls-in-two, "great medicine men, and even
warriors may fulfill a vow, or in grave need venture to take this
Ghost Trail. I'll bet you my canoe you don't get back."
"Yes," said Last-one-to-swim-home-with-the-fodder, "my beaver-mother
warned me in my dream. 'My beaver-child,' she said, 'you were born
lazy, which is incurable, but if you ever do recover, don't attempt
the Ghost Trail. But if you do go, prepare yourself with fasting,
purification, the beaver bundle ceremonial, and the sacrifice of all
your property to the Sun-spirit.' I would not like that part."
"My father," remarked young Wags-his-tail, "did walk this Ghost
Trail, to fulfill a vow. The ghosts ate him, and we never found
anything except his skull. Yes, and his tail-bone," he added
cheerfully.
Storm was laughing as he belted on the hatchet, took up his gun, and
offered his hand to his friends.
"We will pray for you," said Falls-in-two grudgingly, "but it's not
much use in this case."
"Your scouting is bad," said Last-one-to-swim-home-with-the-fodder.
"My dream says you'll get bushed. The best way is not to go."
"Your hunting," said Wags-his-tail, "will make you so thin that the
ghosts won't think you're meat. You may get through to the sacred
woman's lodge."
Thus thoroughly cheered, Storm took the Ghost Trail, which was very
faintly blazed through the dense timber.
For a white man, he was not so bad a tracker. He knew a blaze on a
tree, however much the bark had overgrown the slash. He knew that
mosses and lichens denote the north side of either tree or rock, that
a slope leads down to water, that deer tracks are guides in crossing
a valley, but that elk slot shows the best route following a stream.
The man who knows these things, even when tired or flustered, is not
very easily bushed. Besides, when his mind was quiet, kindly spirits
were able to guide his course, as they always will if one lets them.
For the first few hours he went in great contentment. Farther on,
within the foldings of the foothills, he looked down a thousand feet
or more upon the white earth-shaking torrent, whose northern bank was
precipice unscalable. The southern incurved slope of the cañon, to
which he clung like a fly on a wall, became more perilous as he
advanced, for the moss was strewn with slippery pine needles, while
here and there it was clad with snow, thawed, and then glazed by
frost, so that he had to hew out a tread for every step. No sunlight
ever falls upon that hillside, where the Douglas firs are a couple of
hundred feet high, and fallen trunks perhaps thirty feet in girth lie
rotting, sliding, not to be climbed, most dangerous to pass lest they
break loose. Uphill the whole slope was ice-clad, downhill the
stretches of open ground were more and more abrupt, and as the day
waned, frozen, slippery as glass. Storm worked on, desperate because
the sun was setting and soon it would be dark. It was then in the
dusk that he met the grizzly, an old man bear, a giant, lean from the
winter's fast, morosely hunting tree grubs for a scanty meal. He
reared up from his work on the butt of a fallen tree, angry at being
disturbed, barring Storm's way, determined to have meat.
Storm's stomach flopped over, so he said, for he was terrified.
"Brother," he pleaded nervously, "my woman is wounded, and I'm going
to her. Have pity, and let me off! Brother, do you believe in the
Sun Spirit? See this gun! If I trust in that I'm a rotten shot, but
if I trust in the Sun Spirit----"
The man whirled the gun round his head and launched it flying down
into the cañon.
"Now, God," he cried, "it's Your turn!"
The bear dropped on all fours, and with a snarl of defiance over his
left shoulder dared Storm to follow him.
"Spirit in the Sun! Thanks!" cried Storm. "That gun is Yours."
So he followed the bear, who knew the way down to the river, where
there was ground level enough for camping. He went upstream a
little, out of sight from the gun, lest he be tempted to steal it
back again.
So in the dusk he made a little fire, ate dried meat, hung up the
remainder beyond the reach of roving porcupines, and slept. For fear
lest the bear come back to eat his body, he dared not leave it, but
mother came in his dream to say he had done well. And Rain was
better.
The river was at its very lowest, but even then it makes one's flesh
creep to think of crossing Hamill Creek. Of course the change of
weather that night to steady slopping rain made bathing no wetter
than walking, and, since the fellow swam like a duck, he might as
well land on the north bank. Anybody else would have drowned, but
somehow he got across to the sunlit side of the gorge.
The trouble about the north side is that it is streaked with the
tracks of snowslides, where avalanche has swept away the giant
timber, and in its place grows grass. When a horse falls into that
grass one can see by movements of the foliage where his four legs are
waving for assistance, but one cannot chop one's way to him, or by
any means get down to the rescue. As to the flowers, there is one,
the giant hemlock, whose blossom can just be reached up to by a
mounted man. Yet, when one comes to think, this jungle of late
summer might be quite easily passable in May.
A bull elk was ramping down the gorge rutting, who belled for his
mate, very crazy. When he came upon Storm he lowered his antlers,
and charged, but the man who had put the fear into a real bear was
not to be alarmed by any stag.
"Can't you see I'm not a cow? Get out of my way!" said Storm.
The elk propped with his four legs to a halt, stood for a moment at
gaze, and turned off, shattering through the underbrush.
And presently a gray wolf, who was tracking the elk, showed himself
to Storm, rather shyly. Indians are comrades, but this one was off
color.
"Brother," said the man, "your people and mine are at peace. Good
hunting!"
"Not armed!" said the wolf to himself. Then he whimpered softly, for
he was hungry, and the man might help him to meat.
"Show me the way," said Storm, "and I'll give you my dry meat. Take
me to my wife."
The Indians know that wolves have sometimes not only hunted with
people, but also shown them the way, and Storm's power was very
strong since his encounter with the grizzly. He followed the wolf up
the gigantic hills until at dusk he came to a little level field of
old gray snow where gaunt funereal pines like torches stood in the
dripping rain, the mournful rain. The snow had been disturbed and
there were tracks of unshod horses, who would not come up here unless
they were ridden. Here, where the snow had melted through, the
sodden ground showed ashes of a camp fire, pitted by big raindrops
from the trees. This tree whose branches dripped into the ashes was
hung with clothes, torn by the wind to rags, bundles, weapons,
ornaments, offerings to the Sun. It was a place of sacrifice,
dedicated. And the wolf had fled without his reward of meat:
"Surely," thought Storm, "I've been here before. Aye, in this life
I've sat beside that fire."
He peered through a veil of rain into the violet gloom. "If it were
only clear enough!" he thought. "There is the Apse of Ice!"
He walked to the eastward edge of the platform and looked down the
hillside, precipitous, flecked with dark juniper bushes. A thousand
feet below he could see a level mead where there were horses grazing,
and there in the pasture close against the hill was a tipi. That was
her lodge!
Risking his neck on slippery ground and snowdrift, he rushed that
hillside, leaping, sliding, rolling, falling, catching at bushes,
then scrambling to his feet and quartering zigzag downwards until,
breathless and frantic, he pulled himself up short behind the tipi.
It showed no smoke, no firelight.
He groped his way in the dark, round to the eastward side where the
closed square flap of the doorway faced the valley. There he tripped
over something, and reaching out his hands to save himself, he found
the body of a man, of Rain's enemy whom he had come to kill. To all
Indians the place was holy, the priestess a sacred woman. The tribes
would burn the man who dared molest her. This was no Indian. These
sodden clothes, a serge shirt, duck overalls, long boots, were those
of a white man. There was but one white man in these mountains,
Hiram Kant, the American trapper, known to the Indians as
Hunt-the-girls, who had "heard of a crick up north a-ways, plumb
spoiled with beaver dams."
Storm's groping fingers found the wound. The touch of it made him
retch, for this man was wounded--horribly. Rain's vengeance had
struck. And Thunder Feather had given to this trapper Hunt-the-girls
a new name--"No-man."
If he had only been dead! But this thing was alive, delirious,
muttering, moaning for water. "And it wouldn't be decent to
kill--until I gets him well enough to fight me. I suppose I got
to----"
Sick, faint, reeling, Storm groped in the dark until he found by the
tent door an elk paunch used as a bucket, and half full of water. He
poured some into No-man's mouth.
And all the while there were words, dimly remembered words, which
would run in Storm's head:
"If thine enemy hunger!"
"Well? Let him hunger!" said Storm out loud. "I got to find Rain
first."
Still feeling sick, he groped at the door flap, unfastened it,
wrenched it aside, and reeled into the lodge. He could not hear
properly, for the drumming of raindrops on the skin wall drowned any
sound, although he had a sense which made his flesh creep of
something stirring, of deadly menace waiting in the darkness.
Then with a sense of horror he remembered that Rain knew no word of
English nor he of Blackfoot. In Dreamland, where all languages are
as one, they used to talk of that, and how when they met on
earth--yes, he was to sing the melody she loved best.
His mouth was dry. He could not sing. He was too frightened. He
must! Yes; while he knelt down groping for the fire sticks which
always, in an Indian tipi, lay just within the doorway on the left----
Now 'ere's to hold Tom Bow-oh-oh-le-hing,
The darling of our crew-hoo.
Would she remember? His shaking hands had found the fire sticks.
With fumblings at his belt pouch, he got out flint, steel, and
tinder, struck down brisk showers of sparks----
Faithful be-low, he did his doo-hoo-hooty
But death has broached him too-oo-oo-hoo-hoo--
He blew at the tinder until it kindled----
De-heth has broached hi-im too.
"That's right!" The fire stick caught, and showed him a torch, which
he lighted. "How's that? Eh?" He looked up triumphant, and then,
with narrowing eyes, peered out across the lodge.
What should he know about Red Indian grief, of Blackfoot rites which
mourned for murdered honor? The priestess had bled nearly to death,
had starved her body these four days, and only remained alive because
the guardian spirits gave her power.
They said that Storm was coming. Who could mistake that blundering
white man's rush down the hillside, that muttering of oaths when he
fell over No-man's body, that funny dear old melody?
Had she not loved so fiercely she could not have hated his coming
with such frantic intensity. That he should break into the place
where she hid her misery!
Purity fierce as fire, anger which struck like lightning, pride
ferocious, a wild heart savage as this terrific wilderness, all that
had made her overwrought, hysterical, half mad, found their
expression now as she crouched kneeling, her bow drawn, her arrow
ready, her staring eyes waiting until the light showed the target,
and then she steadied her aim directly at his heart.
Storm saw the woman he had worshiped from childhood, married in
Dreamland, his wife whom now the torch revealed to him for the first
time on earth--a terrible, avenging fury.
As a horseman speaks of his horse, so had this woman spoken of her
animal, her earthly body, which, be it beautiful or be it disfigured,
was a thing apart from herself, which he had never seen, or loved, or
thought about.
It is not the lamp which gives light, or the oil, or the wick, but
the flame. So the earthly body inspires passion, while Love is of
the soul, burning, spiritual, not of the Earth or of Time, but of the
Heavens eternal. And Death can only make the dull flame clear,
shining above the level of the earth mists, in regions where Love is
regnant, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal. The human love which
lights our way on earth is to that mighty power, like the small
twinkle in a sunlit dew-drop.
So Storm saw dimly by the flickering torchlight the disfigured body,
but clearly radiantly the untarnished soul. His love was not of the
Earth, or of Time, or Space or any limitation, but the divine spark
which kindled his manhood, not to be quenched by any illusion of the
senses. And as to the threatened death, what was that to him except
a quick awakening from this earth-dream!
Long ago in Dreamland Rain had launched an arrow through Storm's
heart, but by his faith he had been saved from any pain or injury
from the wound. Laughing at that old memory, he said, "I still
believe"; and, just as he had then, so now he stretched out his arms.
His hair was draggled with the wet, his deerskin dress was soaked,
dank, clinging to his body; but neither the drenching, the cold, nor
his weariness could lower the flash of his eyes or hide the love
which lighted his face as he knelt there, not come to affront her
privacy, but to show Rain that he, her lover, her husband, had come
at last to protect and succor her. She understood.
The bow relaxed, the arrow dropped, she reached out her arms to him,
her lips rendered thanksgiving; but now that the strain was ended,
the wounded, starving woman swayed helplessly, the flush gone from
her face, the light from her eyes. And she fell forward.
Storm dropped the torch. The tipi was all in darkness, and there was
no sound save the steady pattering of rain on the taut skins overhead.