DONALD MEETS A STRANGE GOD
Philip read his friend's thoughts accurately.
"What's this about your stopping only a few days?" he asked quickly.
"Why is this new man at the Bay?"
"I've been sent on to Fort James," said Donald.
Philip whistled. He knew Fort James was the pride of the Hudson's
Bay, the best post in the district, and that his own company had been
undermining its prestige.
"You've earned it!" he exclaimed. "Mactavish knows what he is doing.
Your ladder's set against a star. I'm going to miss you terribly but
that doesn't make me less glad. I fancy you know how I feel."
Then he added with his old banter, "Perhaps it's going to be to my
advantage. I'm not up to my former speed and you had me on the run.
But how about this chap Millington? Will he give me time to catch my
breath?"
"You'd better not try it," Donald laughed. "They say he is a wonder.
One of the new school."
"I know what you mean. The efficiency sort. But how about it? Do you
like him?"
"I don't know," Donald answered. "I haven't had time to get acquainted
since I've been here and he came on from the Saskatchewan district only
a couple of years ago."
"But you've seen him at Fort Bruce."
"A year ago. He's popular because there's a sort of dash and wit about
him that's amusing to most of the people."
"You don't like him, then?"
"I didn't say that."
"No, but I think I understand. I've called on him, of course, yet I
fear I'll be rather lonesome this winter. I'm an Englishman but not
the sort that thinks everyone who comes from London is--well, I know
London."
The next morning as Donald tramped along the shore to the Keewatin
post he found Nee-tah-wee-gan waiting for him beside the trail. He had
not seen her since his return. As he approached she studied his face
closely before speaking.
"Now that you have seen the country where the white man comes from you
are sure you are one," she sneered at last.
Donald had long refused to be drawn into such a discussion but as he
watched her now he saw something other than contempt in her eyes. It
was very close to fear.
"Is that what you are afraid of?" he demanded suddenly.
"Afraid!" she laughed, the old, bitter, contemptuous laugh.
"Why should I be afraid of what can never be? A white man with
Nee-tah-wee-gan his mother! He is still the same boy who wishes to make
his canoe fly like a bird."
Donald walked on but Nee-tah-wee-gan followed. "And where does
Wen-dah-ban go now?" she asked. "Where does he go to try to be a white
man?"
For a moment he did not answer and then, realizing that she could
easily learn, he swung around.
"The 'big trader' has sent me to Fort James," he answered.
For the first time since he had told her of his fasting dream a genuine
fear was in her eyes. She cowered before him and then she asked
haltingly: "Is it that you are to be the trader at Fort James?"
"Yes, but why do you fear it?"
"Fear it!" she screamed in sudden fury. "There is nothing I fear. It is
good. I laugh. It is what I wish. The higher you go the harder will be
your fall. For never forget, Wen-dah-ban, that you are an Indian, that
some day the white man will drive you back to your own people."
She turned abruptly and left him and he did not see her again during
his visit at Whitefish Lake. He went on to Fort James, confident that
she would follow, but the first ice came and her canoe did not appear.
The year passed and she did not come and at last he began to believe
that his success had dismayed her and that she had abandoned her
attempt to drive him back to a wigwam.
When Donald reached Fort Bruce the next summer he learned that Merton
Layard had been shifted to the managership of the headquarters post and
that he and his family had already arrived. Although they had written
to each other as often as fur land's mail service permitted and Merton
had come to Fort Bruce each summer, Donald had not seen Evelyn Layard
for seven years and he went at once to the dwelling house.
"Donald!" Evelyn cried when she opened the door.
She stared at him a moment, unable to hide her amazement, and then she
added: "It is Donald, isn't it?"
"Yes, it's still Donald, Donald Norton," he answered. "Do you remember?"
She knew he referred to the day she had given him her father's name but
the thought back of it told her that this handsome, well dressed young
man whose poise and ease of manner had been startling and a little
disconcerting was still, at heart, the boy she had known at Kenogami.
"How could I forget what a dear lad you were?" she cried and, urged by
pride and affection, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.
"Oh, Donald, you have made me so proud and happy."
Tears came, tears of joy through which her smile shone more gloriously.
Donald's arms tightened about her in a sudden throb of emotion.
"But tell me about yourself," she commanded as she drew him into the
living room. "Everything! Every detail! Donald! Donald! I can't
believe it. Seven years! What a short time! And how long it has been!"
She drew up a chair and he found himself falling easily into
confidential chatter, for the years had not changed Evelyn Layard.
There was still the same warm, impulsive nature, the same quick
understanding.
Evelyn, seeing reminders of the boy she had known but exulting in the
new Donald that had emerged from those first intense years, watched and
marveled as his charm expanded and she found her love recaptured.
While they were still talking Janet entered the room. The girl did not
recognize Donald. She had carried away with her the memory of a serious
youth, who sometimes frightened her with his relentless application
and who had often aroused her anger because of the ease with which he
surpassed her in their school work together. She had never forgotten
their first meeting, when he had peered through the fence at her and
had vehemently denied that he was an Indian, or the time when she had
heard Nee-tah-wee-gan hiss "_keen nish-e-na-be_" and she had flown so
fiercely to his defense.
But there was nothing in the young man before her in the least
reminiscent of that boy or suggestive of what she might have expected
him to become. Long ago fur land had ceased to look for native
characteristics in his face or actions. There was a touch of brown in
his hair, of gray in his eyes, and his features were clear cut and
handsome in a purely British fashion. But most of all it was in the
eyes, those unmistakable countermarks of race, that were found the
qualities which made her forget Nee-tah-wee-gan. Donald's eyes lacked
utterly the furtiveness and suspicion, the veiled yet ever-present
questioning, which indicate the Indian. In them was the warmth, the
clearness and directness and the half-hidden dancing lights of a
kindly, strong and lovable nature.
As the girl hesitated in the door the mother exclaimed: "Janet! You
haven't forgotten Donald!"
At the name, Donald stared in as great bewilderment as the young woman.
He remembered a light haired, pink-and-white skinned child, shut off
from the Indian children by the picket fence. His last sight of her had
been as a long-legged, awkward youngster of thirteen waving good-by to
him from the Kenogami dock when he had left for Fort Bruce. He was not
prepared for the startlingly vivid beauty who now stood before him.
"Donald!" Janet repeated. "Not--not Wen-dah-ban?"
It was the name by which she had first known him and with which she had
always spoken to him and it came naturally to her lips.
"Janet!" her mother cried in quick dismay.
"Wen-dah-ban," Donald laughed. "Of course. Janet never called me
anything else."
Janet's glance thanked him for the easy manner in which he had met the
situation. The moment she had spoken the name she had regretted it,
though he had not shown resentment.
"I can't believe it!" Donald exclaimed in frank admiration, as he
stepped back and looked at the girl. "And yet I don't imagine you had
any difficulty in getting used to her," he laughed to her mother.
"You won't either," Evelyn laughed back.
"How about me?" Janet asked. "I'll have to begin all over again, too.
Mother, it wasn't fair of you. You should have warned me."
She said it easily but in reality her banter was hiding a genuine
amazement. Since her return she had heard much of Donald from her
father but had attributed that warm-hearted gentleman's praise to
pride in the development of a successful fur trader. With her London
viewpoint, she had not been able to imagine Donald being anything else.
"It is seven years since I have seen him," Evelyn reminded her. "I,
too, will have to get acquainted again."
"Please don't," Donald begged. "You make me feel like a stranger
and--well, I don't want to be one."
He was not a stranger to the Layards in the days that followed. The old
relationship with Evelyn was established immediately but with Janet it
was another matter. They had parted as boy and girl, one uncouth and in
deadly earnestness, the other only a child. There was little left from
their five years at Kenogami that could serve as a bond or basis of
understanding.
Yet youth never lives in the past and these two quickly ceased trying
to pick up the days when they had first known each other. During her
six years in England Janet's interests had been varied. She had lived
with an aunt who was a rebel in many ways and the girl had escaped
the rigorous and stifling supervision usual in an English home. She
had been thrown in contact with minds that were keen and not heavy,
that found pleasure in lightness and gayety and thereby gave to their
serious moments an added weight.
In Donald she found a man so much like those she had known that she was
constantly puzzled. There was a different exterior, a sturdiness and
a directness, but beneath was a delightful keenness and mobility as
amazing to Janet as it was charming. Her wonder drove her to what she
believed to be a discreet question.
"You were in London only three months?" she asked.
"I had six years of it before I went there," he answered, for he had
divined her thought.
"You mean the free trader at Whitefish Lake?"
"Yes," and Donald's eyes lighted with the thought of his friend. "I
wish you could know Philip. You would like him. I missed him a lot last
winter."
"Dale Millington doesn't seem to share your opinion of Mr. Collinge."
"What does he say?" Donald demanded.
"Nothing direct. He has mentioned him only incidentally. He once spoke
of him as a squaw man with a couple of savage youngsters."
"That would be like Millington," Donald said quietly but with a sudden
hardening of his voice. "He would see only that."
Janet flushed and glanced at him in sudden panic. She had regretted the
words instantly, for she had recognized their application to his own
history, and yet it was not of this that Donald was thinking. For a
week Dale Millington had been vaguely disturbing. The young Englishman
was the modern type of fur trader, a little in advance of his time,
although old Duncan Mactavish had read the signs long before and knew
his worth. He was daring, clever and original in his methods and he
brought to the management of a post that system and quick efficiency
which the older servants of the Hudson's Bay, steeped in precedent and
routine, had failed to adopt when a strengthened opposition began to
force the change.
Personally Millington was something of a favorite. He had a ready wit
and a certain ease of manner which made him a welcome addition to
"Bachelors' Hall" during the summer gatherings of the post managers
and the central figure in the round of teas given by the women of Fort
Bruce.
Janet Layard was not only unusually beautiful and charming but she was
the only young white woman in the entire district. It was inevitable
that she should attract Millington and that the girl herself should
find enjoyment in his company after the lonely winter at Kenogami.
Donald's own pleasure in Janet's presence was such that his month at
Fort Bruce was nearly gone before he realized just how much of her
attention Millington claimed and what was at the bottom of his own
reaction to it. But it was the Englishman who, in the last few days,
discovered exactly what the situation was. Confident and a little vain,
he had boasted to Janet of the Whitefish Lake fur receipts.
"I've got that fellow Collinge on his last legs," he said. "Another
year or two and there'll be no Keewatin post at Whitefish."
Janet flared instantly.
"Don't forget that someone else spent six years laying the foundation
for such a thing," she retorted.
Millington hesitated for an instant before he said: "Oh, Norton is
a good man, though he has his limitations. Just at present I am
encumbered with one of them."
"That is contemptible!" Janet cried. "You are the first person I have
heard refer to Donald's mother since I came to Fort Bruce."
"But I don't mean it as you think," Millington answered quickly, for he
had recognized his mistake. "I was merely marveling that he could have
suffered her presence there so long. She isn't even human. She's pure
venom. I understand that she never let a day go by without reminding
him that he is part Indian."
"She is the only person in the entire Fort Bruce district who thinks he
is," Janet declared. "I don't know a finer man than Donald Norton."
The very vehemence of her defense not only showed Millington that he
had made a mistake but it opened his eyes to a new possibility. He had
believed that Donald's history automatically eliminated him and he
had seen in Janet's unconcealed interest in Donald's success only the
natural result of their childhood association. Now he realized that in
the Fort James manager he had a rival and a strong one and, although it
touched his pride and vanity to be forced to compete with the son of a
venomous old squaw for the favor of the only girl he had ever wished to
marry, he never transgressed in Janet's presence again.
But his attitude toward Donald changed immediately. They met frequently
at "Bachelors' Hall," yet Donald had always sensed something in the
young Englishman that made him withhold his friendship. Now Millington
gave cause. The word "half-breed" began to find a place in his
vocabulary when Donald was present. From the first Donald had accepted
the fact that all fur land should know of his parentage but he felt
that it could not be circumstance alone that permitted him to overhear
Millington make several references to Nee-tah-wee-gan.
Yet Donald gave little heed to this. He was absorbed by a new and
baffling emotion, was responding to stimuli which had never touched
his life before. Love was a factor which had not entered the struggle
through which he had lifted himself from a wigwam to a position high in
the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. He had made no provision for
it, had never considered it as a possibility.
Isolated from white people during the first half of his life, reared
in an atmosphere of bitterness and savagery, shut up in lonely posts,
battling always to lift himself and attain the goal he had set,
knowing for only five crowded years the softening influence of a woman,
he was not prepared even to recognize the true significance of what had
come to him until it was time to say good-by to Janet.
He was starting early in the morning for Fort James and Evelyn asked
him to dinner.
"It will be like the old times at Kenogami," she said. "Just the four
of us."
But Donald found it was not like the old times. Then he had always
turned to the mother. Now it was to Janet. Every word the girl said
held his attention. He caught himself staring at her, trying to impress
every feature of her vivid beauty upon his memory, storing up her
characteristic phrases for solace during the long winter.
Later in the evening when duties called both Evelyn and Merton from the
room, Donald discovered a difficulty in saying farewell he had never
before experienced. He had always gone out to his post eager for the
battle for pelts. Now he found himself thinking of the long, lonely
months which lay ahead and he was conscious of an inexplicable desire
to remain in Janet's presence.
"I'll be away almost a year," he finally forced himself to say. "Will
you be here when I get back next summer?"
"Of course," and there was a catch in her laugh which prompted a quick,
intuitive defense. "At least, I have no other plans now."
"You mean you may go back to England?"
Consternation had caused a sudden tremor in his voice. Janet saw, but
her own emotions, in a quickening whirl, were equally disturbing.
"I should stay with father and mother," she admitted. "I have been away
so long."
"But you would rather go back, rather live there?" He was almost
accusing in his apprehensions.
"It was wonderful in London. I have missed many things."
There was no cruelty in Janet's thoughts, no attempt at coquetry. She
had suddenly found herself on the brink of something new and startling
and inexplicably alluring and was fighting desperately for poise.
Before Donald could speak he heard Evelyn returning. Suddenly conscious
of what his expression must tell, he began to examine a book on the
table.
Even this would have told Evelyn something had her thoughts not been
busy with a bit of news--the story of an Indian hunter at Kenogami,
who, when his family was starving, had dragged his frozen feet over
many torturing miles to get aid--which she had just heard through
that important agency of fur land gossip, the kitchen. All three knew
the Indian, a jovial, easy-going fellow, and in their expressions of
sympathy Janet and Donald regained their composure.
But a little later when Donald arose Janet went forward with
outstretched hands.
"You'll write to me, won't you?" she asked. "By the winter packet. A
big, long letter."
"And you?" he demanded joyfully.
"Of course. We all will. Now that we have found you again, Donald, we
are not going to lose you."
"But next summer?"
She laughed as she withdrew her hands. There was the instinctive
feminine attempt to speak lightly of her decision but it could not
conceal the sincerity or courage of her answer.
"I'll be here," she said. "I've come home to stay."