NEE-TAH-WEE-GAN'S REVENGE
Astounded though he was at Nee-tah-wee-gan's disclosure, Millington's
mind leaped instantly to its possible results--not as they affected
Donald or Corrigal but as they might determine his own future.
He believed what Nee-tah-wee-gan had said. He knew how hate swayed
the woman, how it had so ruled her in that moment that she had spoken
unconsciously, wholly unmindful of his presence.
"See here," he exclaimed, as he grasped her shoulder and whirled her
toward him, "does Norton know that, or Corrigal? Do they suspect it?"
"Know what?"
"That Corrigal is his father?"
"Is he?"
"You can't fool me. You said so. Hate drove it out of you."
"You do not mean that I hate my own son?"
"Of course you hate him, and Corrigal, too. But does anyone else know?
Do they suspect it?"
"Why is the white man so interested? It is none of his affair. Surely
you do not hate Corrigal, or----" she paused a moment and looked at
him shrewdly--"or Wen-dah-ban."
Millington hesitated. Then he took a chance.
"I have a reason to hate Norton," he said harshly.
"The white girl at Fort Bruce, eh? I have heard. As the traders wish
to know the hearts of the hunters, so we know the desires of the
white people. There was not an Indian who went to Fort Bruce with the
brigades but knew you wished the white girl for your woman--the white
girl who looked only at Wen-dah-ban."
"See here!" Millington broke in harshly. "Do Corrigal and Norton know
this?"
"How could they know if it is not true?"
Millington was rapidly losing his temper. He saw that Nee-tah-wee-gan
was perfectly self-controlled now and was only baiting him.
"They will know it!" he exclaimed. "I'll tell Corrigal. I'll write him
a letter."
It was more than fear that flashed in her eyes. It was despair and
Millington knew he was on the right track.
"I'll write to Corrigal," he repeated, "and when Corrigal knows, and
Norton knows, Norton won't be kicked out as you wish. Corrigal will be
glad. For thirty years he has been lonely. He has mourned for the son
who died in the fire. Now Norton can take the place of that son and
when Corrigal becomes old Norton will be the 'big trader.'"
But Nee-tah-wee-gan laughed scornfully.
"Yes," she said, "Wen-dah-ban will become the 'big trader' and he will
get the white girl. You will tell Corrigal so that can happen."
She drew her shawl over her head and walked out of the trade shop.
For several days Millington considered the situation. From the first
he had believed the old Indian woman spoke the truth when she watched
Corrigal departing for Fort James, understanding how hate had forced
the revelation. But if hate had stirred the savage wrath he saw
how it might have done so in the past--how under somewhat similar
circumstances Donald could have heard the same thing.
He was tempted to talk to Philip Collinge. He knew the bond that
existed between him and Donald and took it for granted that Donald, if
he knew, would have told his friend. But, though he had only scorn for
Collinge, Millington was afraid of his fellow countryman. He sensed his
integrity and good breeding.
Millington was repeating his secret raids on Donald's territory. He had
planned them cleverly and believed he could escape detection but he saw
that it would be folly to continue them if there were a chance that
Corrigal should learn Donald was his son.
In desperation he sought Nee-tah-wee-gan, visiting her cabin at night.
He was subtle now. The old woman had bested him in the first battle of
wits and he determined that the keener mind of the white man should
triumph. Purposely he avoided the subject of Donald's parentage,
tried to ingratiate himself with presents and to worm his way into
her confidence, to establish a common purpose between them. But
Nee-tah-wee-gan had nursed her solitary hate too long and met every
effort with inscrutability or taunting laughter.
Meanwhile the winter was passing. Millington had delayed further
raids until he could extract more information from Nee-tah-wee-gan.
He knew that if he were to discredit Donald with Corrigal he must act
quickly and he did not dare venture until he had the facts of their
relationship and could determine how far he might go. It was thus that
when he went to visit the old woman one stormy night he carried a
bottle of Scotch with him.
He did not offer her a drink but depended upon the Indian's
uncontrollable craving for alcohol to open the way. For a while he sat
and talked, gossiping aimlessly, occasionally putting the bottle to his
lips and always unmindful of Nee-tah-wee-gan's contemptuous attitude.
At last, as he sat the whisky down, she suddenly reached forth a hand.
"The company does not allow that," he said as he placed it behind him.
"What does the company know or care about an old woman?" she retorted.
He ignored her and went on talking of something else, but
Nee-tah-wee-gan, with a pretext of getting wood for the fire, snatched
the bottle. He pretended that he wished to recover it but did not
succeed until she had filled a tin cup and resumed her seat.
As Nee-tah-wee-gan drank, with slow sips at first, then greedily,
the effect was not what he had expected. She crouched beside the
little fire. There was no light except the red glow from the open
hearth and this brought out in strong relief the old woman's fierce,
hate-distorted features. Millington, sitting back in the darkness,
waited impatiently for some change--for some indication that her
reticence was giving way before the liquor.
But none came. Her brown, deeply-lined face was touched with the red of
the coals on the hearth, the deep wrinkles appearing to be even deeper
in the sharp shadows. Behind her and on either side was only the black
darkness of the room. Even the lower part of her body was invisible.
She sat there, immovable, like a sharply silhouetted bust of savagery
suspended in midair. Not a muscle moved. Only her eyes, glittering
viciously, seemed alive.
Millington did not speak for a long time. At last he took a drink from
the bottle and then set it before him. Apparently Nee-tah-wee-gan had
not seen but as he leaned back a hand shot out and again she filled her
cup.
She drank slowly now but with growing satisfaction. Her eyes became
brighter and at last, so suddenly and so unexpectedly that Millington
shrank back in the darkness, she burst into diabolical laughter. Whisky
had freed the repressions of thirty years.
"To his own son!" she cried. "To his own son!"
Millington was tense with expectancy. He did not speak and hardly moved
lest he drive back the revelation he felt was coming. Nee-tah-wee-gan
sat there as if alone with the vengeful spirit which had so long
possessed her, dwelling on the triumph which was to be hers, talking as
she must have talked to herself through many a cold winter night.
"To his own son!" she repeated gloatingly. "He will do that. He will
kick him out, drive him back to a wigwam, tell him he is an Indian
and no good. Wen-dah-ban won't know. But after it is done, after
Wen-dah-ban is again an Indian, then I will tell the 'big trader,' then
he will know what Nee-tah-wee-gan has done to him."
"They don't know now?" Millington asked softly.
She turned toward him. "They do not dream it. In all the world no one
suspects but you. And you would not have known if my hate had not
driven it from me when I saw him for the first time in nearly thirty
years. Only it does you no good to know," she added shrewdly. "You have
no proof and I would say you lied."
She grinned at him maliciously and then lifted the cup to her lips
with a gesture intended to be mocking but which was so uncertain that
Millington exulted because she was losing self-control.
"They will never learn until Norton is again in a wigwam?" he demanded.
"Never!" she cried. "It is for that I have waited."
Millington had learned what he wished to know. His own plans could be
carried out. He understood Corrigal well enough to see that another bad
year for Donald would mean his transfer from the district--a disgrace
which would end him forever with the Layards. Yet he must be certain
that hate could keep her silent.
"Why do you wait?" he asked.
"To make Corrigal suffer!" Nee-tah-wee-gan screamed, and she rocked
back and forth in sudden frenzy.
"Suffer?" Millington persisted, for he saw her tongue has been loosened
at last. "How would that make him suffer?"
"Because the son he lost and has always wanted would have been within
his reach all these years if he had only known."
"But he would not care," Millington taunted. "He has no use for a
half-breed."
"Who is talking of a half-breed?"
"Norton is one."
"Would I do such a thing to my own son?" she countered. "Would I use my
own flesh and blood to gain my revenge?"
Millington stared without comprehension.
"You're mad!" he exclaimed at last.
"Mad!" and her voice rose to a shrill scream. "Wen-dah-ban is no son of
mine. He is not even an Indian. He is the son of the 'big trader' and
his white wife. He is the son Corrigal believes died in the fire."
Dumfounded though he was, Millington realized what this statement meant
to him. If Donald was white and well-born, nothing would be denied him.
The Englishman visioned his rival's swift climb upward, with love and
life before him, and he hated as he had never known he could hate.
Then the preposterous nature of Nee-tah-wee-gan's statement struck
him. Such a thing could not be true. It existed only in the malign
imagination of this old squaw. He laughed in his relief.
"You couldn't make Corrigal or anyone else believe such a thing," he
sneered. "They would say you dreamed it, and you did."
Nee-tah-wee-gan glared at him from the floor. Millington's contempt
removed the last restraint. Her body swayed a little. The madness of
liquor had been added to the madness of hate. Primitive passion had
been freed from the bonds of lifelong purpose. The vanity of the savage
demanded expression.
"Dreamed it!" she cried. "I will tell you how I dreamed it, white
man--how I have repaid the 'big trader' who cheated and lied to me.
Then you will believe, as Corrigal will believe when I tell him--when I
remind him of the girl he knew in the mission when he was the trader at
Fort James. He was big and handsome and always laughing then. The white
people said he was a great man and some day would be chief of all the
district.
"In the beginning he did not see me. Always he talked to the white men,
laughing and joking, and he never seemed to know there were women. One
day I saw him alone and I walked to meet him. I smiled and said 'bo'
jou',' but he only said 'bo' jou',' and went on.
"But the next time he smiled and the time after that he stopped and
soon we began to talk and laugh together. I was in the mission school
then, learning the ways of the white people. My clothes were well made
and clean. I was half white and pretty.
"But he only laughed and joked when he saw me. He never touched me. Yet
I could wait. I knew what the long, lonely winters do to the white man.
He would think of me, many, many times. I would grow more beautiful
in his eyes and when he came back the next summer he would look at me
differently.
"It was as I thought, when summer came. His eyes were not the same and
his voice had changed. The long winter had done what I knew it would.
Still he did not say anything with words--only with his eyes. Yet I was
content. No matter what the color of her skin, a woman always knows
some things, and no matter what the color of his skin there are some
things a man can never hide from a woman. Yet a woman knows, too, that
words must be said and that the words must be true.
"So one night I walked down the shore just before dark. I knew he would
see me go and I did not have to wait long. He did not speak when he
found me there in the night. He just put his arms around me so that
I could not breathe and he kissed me so that it hurt and then he let
loose of me and he said, 'Nee-tah-wee-gan, how would you like to go to
Fort James with me and be my woman?'
"It was what I wanted. It meant that I could live in a big house and
have servants, that I would not have to work, to scrape hides or set
snares for rabbits or paddle a canoe or carry burdens on the portages.
It meant that of all the hundreds of Indians at Fort James I would be
the highest. I said 'yes.'
"Then we walked back quickly, for I wanted to tell my friends at the
mission."
She stopped and her eyes blazed with hatred. Her voice was shrill as
she plunged on with her story.
"That night a canoe came from the great salt sea to the north. In
it was a woman from England, come to teach the children of the post
manager at Fort Bruce. She was young and she was white. When Corrigal
saw her the next morning he forgot he had ever seen me. He never came
near me again. He never saw me when we passed. All the time he was with
the white woman and two weeks after she came they went to the mission
and were married."
Nee-tah-wee-gan became speechless for a moment. The blind passion of
the primitive overcame her. Hatred flared afresh and she cast aside all
restraint.
"I followed them to Fort James!" she cried. "There was a tripper, a
half-breed who had come with the Fort James brigade, and my friends
were laughing at me. I smiled at him and when he went back I was his
woman. The missionary married us. Corrigal knew, but he did not seem
to notice. When he saw me at Fort James he smiled like a fool. 'It is
best,' he said. 'We will both be much happier.' And I smiled and said
'yes'--and I waited.
"I could speak English then and Corrigal's wife often talked to me
because there were no others who could understand her language or teach
her Ojibwa. She made me the cook in the dwelling house and I lived in
the room back of the kitchen.
"Sometimes when I was alone I laughed. I had thought I would go to
Fort James and be the chief woman of the post--that I would live in
the dwelling house. I went but I had no servants. I lived back of the
kitchen. I was the cook. I worked while the white woman did nothing,
and I would laugh, not because of what was but because of what would be.
"A year went by after Corrigal brought his white woman to Fort James
and then she had a child, a boy. It was Wen-dah-ban, the one you call
Norton. About the same time, I, too, had a child, also a boy. Because I
was an Indian I got up the second day and cooked the meals but because
she was white she lay in bed for a long time. She was very thin and
she suffered and when I brought her food I smiled and said soft things
but inside I was laughing. For thirty years I have laughed that she
suffered so."
Nee-tah-wee-gan paused and stared at the coals on the hearth. Then she
suddenly drained the cup and plunged again into her story.
"After that she was always sick. A year went by and she became very ill
and while she lay in bed Corrigal had to go to an outpost, two days'
journey away. It was spring and he said he would hurry back. The chance
for which I had always waited, to be alone there with the white woman,
had come, but I did not see it. I was thinking of something else--of my
own child which had never been well and which now I believed was going
to die.
"I had asked Corrigal for medicine but he would not give it to me. He
said the baby was too young, that he did not dare give it medicine,
that the child might die if he did. He went away, for he was in a great
hurry to get back to his wife, and the night after he left my baby
died."
Nee-tah-wee-gan ceased talking and her bent body straightened. She
stared straight before her and Millington, awed by her fiendish
expression and well aware of what her savage, pitiless spirit may have
driven her to, waited breathlessly.
"For an hour I cursed Corrigal," she began at last, and a tigerish
exultation forced out the words with an ominous sibilation. "I forgot
all I had planned. I knew only hate. Then suddenly I saw that I could
do more than I had ever planned, more than I had hoped. I saw that I
could make him suffer for a lifetime and that at the end I could make
him think his past suffering had been only joy.
"I took the dead body of my child and went to the white woman's room.
She was asleep and I picked up her baby from beside her and put mine in
its place. And then I emptied the oil lamp over the bed and the floor
and touched a match to it. I ran to my room back of the kitchen with
her baby--with Wen-dah-ban--and got into bed and laid there until I
heard shouts. Men came and told me the dwelling house was burning and
to take my child and run."
Nee-tah-wee-gan rocked back and forth on the floor as if in ecstacy.
The very curve of her bent old back seemed to denote a transport
of joy and a dry, harsh cackle burst from her lips. Millington,
horror-stricken, did not move or speak.
"Corrigal came back after three days," she continued. "I watched him
when his dog team stopped at the post. He was like a man who dies
inside and only his body moves. He did not stay at Fort James. An hour
after he came he took another dog team and drove away to Fort Bruce. I
never saw him again until he came this winter.
"That," and she looked up at Millington, "is what I did to John
Corrigal. But it is not all I had planned. I was going to make an
Indian of his son and soon I, too, left Fort James and no one saw that
I carried a white child. For I was going to make an Indian of him and,
when it was too late, when he could never be anything else, I was going
to find Corrigal and tell him. Then I would be ready to die."
Millington had recovered sufficiently from his horror to begin to
doubt. He knew Nee-tah-wee-gan was capable of such a diabolical act,
that the primitive hate and the Indian's lust for revenge would carry
her to any lengths, but he saw, too, how thirty years of venom and
brooding could have affected her mind and how she could have come to
believe something that existed only in her imagination.
"You have thought of this so long you believe it is true," he said.
"You have dreamed it. You can never prove it."
Nee-tah-wee-gan did not answer. Not only the hatred but the liquor
seemed to have been burned out of her by the relation of her fiendish
story. Her eyes were dull. Her savage features sagged grotesquely.
"You can never prove it," Millington repeated, convinced now that he
was right.
"I do not worry about that," she said dully. "I know. When the time
comes I will show one tiny thing to Corrigal and he will believe."
Unconsciously she reached one hand toward her breast and clutched her
woolen waist. Millington saw a leather thong tighten about her neck as
she did so.
Silently he passed the bottle to her. His face was still in the dark
and she could not see the sudden gleam in his eyes but she thrust the
whisky from her.
"Go home," she commanded harshly. "I am sleepy--sleepy from the telling
of fairy tales to foolish children."