ON THE SPIRIT RIVER
The sun looked over the hills and laid a commanding finger on Sam's
eyelids. He awoke, and arose from under the little windbreak he had
made of poplar branches.
Before him rolled a noble green river with a spruce-clad island in the
middle, stemming the current with sharp prow like a battleship. On the
other side rose the hills, high and wooded. More hills filled the
picture behind him on this side, sweeping up in fantastic
grass-covered knolls and terraces.
The whole valley up and down, bathed in the light of early morning,
presented as fair a scene as mortal eyes might hope to behold.
Sam regarded it dully. He looked around him at the natural meadow
sloping gently up from the river-bank to the grassy hills behind, a
rich field ready to the farmer's hand and crying for tilth, and he
said to himself, "This is my land," but there was no answering thrill.
Life was poisoned at its source.
He had walked for three days borne up by his anger. His sole idea was
to put as much distance as possible between him and his fellow-men. He
chose to trail to Spirit River, because that was the farthest place he
knew of.
Each day he walked until his legs refused to bear him any longer, then
lay down where he was in his blankets and slept. The day-long, dogged
exercise of his body and the utter weariness it induced drugged his
pain.
His gun kept him supplied with grouse and prairie chicken, and he
found wild strawberries in the open places and mooseberries in the
bush.
Bread he went without until he had the luck to bring down a moose.
Returning to an Indian encampment he had passed through, he traded the
carcass for a little bag of flour and a tin of baking-powder.
His sufferings were chiefly from thirst, for he was crossing a
plateau, and he did not know the location of the springs.
Excepting this party of Indians, he met no soul upon the way. For the
most part the rough wagon trail led him through a forest of lofty,
slender aspen-trees, with snowy shafts and twinkling, green crowns.
There were glades and meadows, carpeted with rich grass patterned with
flowers, and sometimes the road bordered a spongy, dry muskeg.
All the country was flat, and Sam received the impression that he was
journeying on the floor of the world. Consequently, when he came
without warning to the edge of a gigantic trough, and saw the river
flowing a thousand feet below, the effect was stunning.
At any other time Sam would have lingered and marvelled; now, seeing
some huts below, he frowned and thought: "I'll have to submit to be
questioned there."
This was Spirit River Crossing. The buildings consisted of a little
company store, a tiny branch of the French outfit, kept by a native,
and the police "barracks," which housed a solitary corporal.
The coming of a white man was an event here, and when Sam got down the
hill the company man and the policeman made him heartily welcome,
glancing curiously at the slenderness of his outfit. They wanted to
hear the latest news of the settlement, and Sam gave it, suppressing
only the principal bit. He left that to be told by the next traveller.
In the meantime he hoped to bury himself farther in the wilderness. As
soon as he told his name Sam saw by their eyes that they were
acquainted with his earlier adventures. Everything is known up north.
In answer to Sam's questions, they informed him there was first-rate
bottom-land fifteen miles up the river on the other side. This was the
famous Spirit River land, eighteen inches of black loam on a sandy
subsoil.
A white man, Ed Chaney, had already squatted on a piece of it, a
lonely soul. There were some Indians nearer in.
Naturally, they were keen to know what Sam had come for. The last time
they had heard of him he was a freighter. His reticence stimulated
their curiosity.
"Come to look over the land before you bring your outfit in, I
suppose?" suggested Sollers, the trader.
"No, I'm going to stop," said Sam.
"How are you going to farm with an axe and a gun?"
"I'll build me a shack, and hunt and fish till I have a bit of luck,"
said Sam.
The two exchanged a look which said either this young man was
concealing something or he hadn't good sense.
"Luck doesn't come to a man up here," said the trader. "Nothing ever
happens of itself. You've got to turn in and make it."
Declining invitations to stop a night or a few days, or all summer,
Sam got the trader to put him across the river in a canoe. There was
also a scow to transport heavier loads. Landing, he turned up-stream.
Their description of the utter lonesomeness of that neighbourhood had
appealed to him.
The sun was growing low when he spied a little tent in the meadow,
rising from the river. The faint trail he was following ended at the
gate of a corral beside it. There was a cultivated field beyond. These
objects made an oddly artificial note in a world of untouched nature.
At the door of the tent stood a white man, gazing. A shout reached
Sam's ears. He was lucky in his man. Though he and Ed Chaney had had
but the briefest of meetings when the latter passed through the
settlement, Ed hailed him like a brother. He was a simple soul,
overflowing with kindness.
"Hello! Hello!" he cried. "Blest if I didn't think you was a ghost!
Ain't seen one of my own colour since I come. Gee! a fellow's tongue
gets rusty for the lack of wagging. Come on in. Ain't got much to
show, but what there is is yours. I'll have supper for you in two
shakes. It certainly was white of you to come on to me for the night."
Ed seemed to see nothing strange in Sam's situation, nor was he in the
least curious concerning the gossip of the country. This comforted Sam
strangely. Ed was a little, trim, round-headed man, with a cropped
thatch of white, and dancing brown eyes. Sixty years had in nowise
impaired his vigour. He was an incorrigible optimist and a dreamer.
His long-pent tongue ran like a mechanical toy when the spring is
released. He had a thousand schemes for the future, into all of which,
as a matter of course, he immediately incorporated Sam. Sam had come
to be his partner. That was settled without discussion. Sam, weary in
body and mind, was content to let somebody run him.
"West of me, on the other side of the gully yonder, there's another
handsome piece of land. Slopes down from the hills to the river-bank
smooth as a lady's bosom! Not a stick on it, either; all ready to turn
over. Now you take that and put up a shack on it, and we'll work the
two pieces together with my tools.
"In the meantime, till you get a little ahead, you work for me for
wages, see? I've got my crop in, all right--potatoes and barley; now
I've got to build me a house. I need help with it. I'll pay you in
grub."
"That certainly is decent of you," murmured Sam.
"Cut it out!" cried Ed. "A man has got to have a partner. Say, in a
month already I'm near gibbering with the lonesomeness. It was a lucky
stroke for both of us that brought you to my door."
They talked until late--that is to say, Ed talked. Sam warmed
gratefully to his friendliness--it was genuine friendliness, that
demanded nothing in return; but in the end the uninterrupted stream of
talk confused his dulled faculties.
He could neither take it in properly nor answer intelligently. When Ed
suggested turning in, therefore, he declined to share the tent.
"I like to lie by myself," he said.
"That's all right!" cried Ed. "Many is like that. Maybe you wouldn't
get much sleep with me anyhow. I ain't half talked out yet."
"I'll go lie in my own field," said Sam with a wry smile.
So he had made the little shelter of leaves, facing the river, and
built a fire in front. But to-night he could not win forgetfulness.
In three days he had walked close on a hundred miles, and the last
long day had overtaxed his strength. He was in that most wretched of
states, too fatigued to sleep. His body ached all over, and his mind
was filled with black hopelessness.
As long as he had been on the road he had been buoyed up by movement,
by the passing scene. To youth a journey always suggests escape from
oneself. Now that he had arrived he found that he had brought his
burden along with him.
There was no more fight left in him. He was conscious only of an
immense desire for something he would not acknowledge to himself.
When at last he did fall asleep it was only to dream of Bela. By the
irony of fate he saw Bela as she might have been, wistful, honest, and
tender; anything but the sullen, designing liar his anger had built up
in the daytime. In dreams she smiled on him, and soothed his weariness
with an angel's touch.
He awoke with all his defences undermined and fallen. He could have
wept with vexation at the scurvy tricks sleep played him. Then he
would drop off and dream of her again; combing her hair in the
firelight; leading him by the hand through forests; paddling him down
rivers; but always transfigured with tenderness.
That was why he found no zest in the morning sunshine.
Ed Chaney, casting a glance at him, said: "You've overdone it. Better
lay off for a couple of days."
"I'm able to work," replied Sam. "I want to work."
"All right!" agreed Ed cheerfully. "You can hoe the garden. I'll go to
the piny ridge and chop."
All day Sam kept himself doggedly at work, though as soon as Ed
disappeared he had to fight the impulse to drop everything and fly
farther. It did not matter where he went, so he kept moving. It seemed
to him that only in movement was any escape to be had from the weight
pressing on his brain. He wanted to be alone. In his disorganized
state of nerves even Ed's friendliness was a kind of torture.
Nevertheless, when night came, another reaction set in, and he elected
to sleep with Ed because he could not face such another night alone.
They lay down side by side in their blankets. Ed babbled on as
inconsequentially as a child. He required no answers.
"We'll build a two-room house so's you can be by yourself when you
want. Two men living together get on each other's nerves sometimes,
though both are good fellows, and friends, too. Begin to grouse and
snarl like man and wife. Why, up here they tell of a man who up and
murdered his partner for no reason but he was tired looking at him.
"Afterward we will build you a house of your own, so you can hold your
land proper. Expect there'll be quite a rush next spring. This year
most of them is stopping by Caribou Lake. But I want a river. I love a
flowing river at my door; it seems to bring you new thoughts. This
river is navigable for six hundred miles up and down. Some day we'll
see the steamboats puffing in front here. I'll put out a wharf for
them to land at.
"And you and me's got the best piece of land the whole way! Eighteen
inches of black loam! We'll be rich men before we die. Wheat ought to
be the best. When others come around us we will put in a little mill
to grind the crop. The company would buy all our flour. What do you
think of that for a scheme, eh?... Bless my soul, he's dropped off!"
In the middle of the night Sam awoke to find the moon shining in his
face through the open door of the tent. He had had a real sleep. He
felt better. He was irresistibly drawn to look outside.
In the pale sky the great, full moon shone with an extraordinary
transparency. The field sloping down to the water was powdered with
silver dust. The river was like a steel shield with a bar of shining
gold athwart it.
On the other side the heights crouched like black beasts at the feet
of the moon. The night seemed to be holding its breath under the spell
of beauty. Only a subtle murmur arose from the moving river.
So much loveliness was like a knife in Sam's breast. The pain
surprised him. It was as if nature had rested him with sleep only to
enable him to suffer more keenly.
"What's the use of it if a man must be alone!" his heart cried. "No
beauty, no happiness, no peace ever for me! I want her! I want her! I
want her!"
Terrified by the trend of his own thoughts, he turned inside and shook
Ed Chaney by the shoulder. Ed, with many a snort and grunt, slowly
came back to consciousness.
"What's the matter?" he demanded. "The horses--wolves?"
"No, everything is all right," said Sam.
"What's the matter, then?"
"Would you mind staying awake a little?" begged Sam. "I--I can't
sleep. Got the horrors, I guess."
"Sure thing!" said Ed. He took "horrors" quite as a matter of course.
He was a comfortable soul. He crept to the door and looked out,
gradually yawning himself into complete wakefulness.
"God! what a night!" he said simply. "The moon is like a lady coming
down to bathe!"
"I hate it!" cried Sam shakily. "Close the flaps."
Ed did so, and returned to his blankets. "Let's have a smoke," he
suggested cosily.
They lit up. Sam's pipe, however, went out immediately.
"I suppose you think I'm crazy," he said deprecatingly.
"Oh, I've been young myself," replied Ed.
"If you don't mind I want to talk about it," said Sam. "It's driving
me crazy!"
"Fire away," assented Ed. "Is it a woman?"
"Yes," replied Sam. "How did you know?"
Ed smiled to himself.
"She's no good!" went on Sam bitterly. "That's what hurts. She's just
a scheming, lying savage! She's only working to get me in her power. I
can't trust her. I've got good reason to know that, and yet--oh God!
she's right in my blood! I can't stop thinking about her a minute.
"Sometimes I think she's a good woman, you know, the real thing,
gentle and true! It's my imagination makes me think that. I _know_
she's no good--but it's driving me crazy. I want her so bad, it seems
as if I'd die if I didn't go back to her. That's what she wants, to
get me under her thumb. I'm a fool! I've got no strength to resist
her!"
"Well, now," said Ed comfortably, "you're all excited. Maybe she ain't
as bad as all that."
"She is! She is!" cried Sam. "I've got good reason to know it."
"'Tain't the thing itself that drives you crazy," Ed went on
philosophically. "It's thinking about it too much. Your brain goes
round like a squirrel in his little cage, and you don't know where you
are. Now, if you could put the whole business out of your mind a
little while, shut a door on it, so to speak, by and by, when you open
it again, there's the right answer standing there plain as a
pike-staff!"
"Forget it!" cried Sam. "It's with me night and day! If I let go, I'll
cave in. I'll go running back! God help me, if she ever gets hold of
me. I'd be the laughing-stock of the whole country! I couldn't look a
child in the face! No! No! If you're my friend, keep me from going
back! Have you got a Bible?"
"Sure," said Ed. "There in the top of that dunnage bag at your hand.
What do you want it for?"
"I'll settle it," Sam muttered, searching for the book. He found it.
"I'll take an oath on it," he said to Ed. "I want you to hear it.
Because a man can find a way to get out of an oath he swears to
himself. Listen!"
A faint effulgence filtering through the canvas revealed him kneeling
on his blankets, with the book in his hands.
He said solemnly: "I swear on this holy book and on my honour that I
will never go back to this woman. And if I break this oath may all men
despise me! So help me God. Amen!"
"That's a good strong one," remarked Ed cheerfully.
"Yes, a man could hardly break that," murmured Sam, oddly calmed.
"Light up," said Ed.
"No, I think I can sleep now."
* * * * *
Sam did sleep until morning. He arose, not exactly in a jovial mood,
nevertheless calm. He might have a dull ache in the bottom of his
breast, but the wild struggle was over. The matter was disposed of for
good.
After breakfast he and Ed hitched up the team and went to the pine
ridge to haul the logs Ed had cut the day before. They had returned
with a load, and were throwing them off at the site of the proposed
house, when Ed suddenly cocked his head to listen.
"Horses," he said, "and wheels."
"Some of the natives," suggested Sam.
Ed shook his head. "No occasion for them to bring a wagon. They come
horseback."
Sam scowled; dreading, hoping--what he knew not.
By and by the team and wagon clattered into view from among the trees
along the river.
"My horses!" cried Sam involuntarily. Filled with a kind of panic, his
eyes sought the hills.
A second glance showed him both the figures visible in the wagon-box
were of men. He calmed down. Whether his principal feeling was of
relief or disappointment, he could not have said. Ed was looking at
him curiously.
"Not mine," said Sam, blushing. "I mean the team I used to drive."
As the horses mounted the rise, Sam called in a softened voice:
"Sambo! Dinah!"
The little black pair pricked up their ears and whinnied. Sam went to
meet them. The two men he dimly remembered as breed-boys around the
settlement. Scarcely regarding them, he pulled the horses' ears and
rubbed their noses, while they nozzled him capriciously with delicate
whickerings.
"Old boy! Old girl!" whispered Sam. "You haven't forgotten me, eh?
Maybe you miss me just the same as I miss you!"
"How did you come by this team?" he demanded of the driver.
As he looked up he saw that a third head and shoulders had risen above
the edge of the box. He saw a face incredibly wrinkled, framed in
long, straggling grey hair. The bright eyes twinkled merrily.
"Hello, Sam!"
"Musq'oosis!" cried Sam, recoiling. Fearful of other surprises, he
hastened to look in the wagon-box. There was nothing more in it save
their bedding and grub.
Musq'oosis clambered down and shook hands with Sam and Ed.
"Tell them to unhitch," said Sam, mindful of the duties of
hospitality.
Musq'oosis shook his head. "Got go back," he said. "Got sleep to-night
on Little Prairie. Home to-morrow night."
Sam felt relieved. His ordeal was not to be long continued then.
Whatever colour might be given it, he knew what Musq'oosis had really
come for.
Ed, out of a sentiment of delicacy, retired to finish unloading his
wagon. Musq'oosis sent the two breed-boys to help him. Musq'oosis
himself squatted in the grass, while Sam stood caressing the horses.
* * * * *
"Then you not comin'," said Musq'oosis, a quarter of an hour later. He
had spent his best efforts in vain.
Sam gloomily shook his head.
"I moch sorry," said the old man.
"Did she send you after me?" demanded Sam abruptly.
"No."
"What made you come, then?"
"I t'ink she look too moch at Mahooley. He bad man to woman. Bela, she
mos' lak my daughter. I feel bad."
A horrible pain went through Sam's breast. He laughed as he thought
blithely. "If she wants Mahooley she'll marry him. You and I have got
nothing to do with it."
"You could come and tak' her 'way from him maybe."
"Nothing doing," said Sam grimly.
"Mahooley maybe not marry her honest," suggested Musq'oosis.
A spasm passed over Sam's face. The horses strained back, startled,
from his hand. "Oh, for God's sake, I've told you a dozen times it is
nothing to me!" he cried. "Nobody can make Bela do what she doesn't
want to do. If she goes with Mahooley, that's her look out!"
Fearing that his self-control was about to escape him altogether, Sam
walked away a few steps. When he came back his face was set.
Musq'oosis saw no hope there. He shrugged. "Well--got no more to say.
I moch sorry!"
Sam wished with all his heart that he would go and be done with it.
"You say goin' tak' up land here," said Musq'oosis politely. "Let me
see your land."
Sam, calling to one of the boys to watch the horses, led the way
across the planted ground and over the gully to his own fair field.
Musq'oosis surveyed it with bright eyes. "Ah, _miwasan_!" he cried.
"Beautiful! There is no better land!"
"Good enough," said Sam indifferently.
"There on that little hill. You will build good house there."
"I suppose so."
"You will have porch lak Gilbert Beattie got for sittin' on. You sit
in chair, and look up and down river every night. You build big barn.
Have moch horse and cattle, I guess. You will be rich, all right."
Sam laughed mirthlessly. "You're as bad as Ed."
"What good your richness do you if you all alone," asked Musq'oosis
slyly. "You want a wife to mak' your heart glad. A handsome wife and
many fat babies. There is only one girl for you. Good face to see;
good hands to work; good heart to love. I know her, and I say so.
There was never any girl so fine as her in this country. Will you let
ot'er man get her?"
Sam turned on him with extraordinary violence. "I told you to cut it
out!" he cried. "By God, if you say another word----You make me mad!
Once I thought you were my friend. Get out of here before I forget
you're old and helpless! For the last time, I tell you I will not go!
I have sworn an oath. It is ended!"
Musq'oosis shrugged. "All right! I go back!" he said dully.