After a time the interest in this wedding-gift declined at Fort Guidon,
and but three people remembered it with any singular distinctness--Ida,
Pierre, and Macavoy. Pierre was interested, for in his primitive mind he
knew that, however wild a promise, life is so wild in its events, there
comes the hour for redemption of all I O U’s.
Meanwhile, weeks, months, and even a couple of years passed, Macavoy
and Pierre coming and going, sometimes together, sometimes not, in all
manner of words at war, in all manner of fact at peace. And Ida, out of
the bounty of her nature, gave the two vagabonds a place at her fireside
whenever they chose to come. Perhaps, where speech was not given, a gift
of divination entered into her instead, and she valued what others found
useless, and held aloof from what others found good. She had powers
which had ever been the admiration of Guidon Hill. Birds and animals
were her friends--she called them her kinsmen. A peculiar sympathy
joined them; so that when, at last, she tamed a white wild duck, and
made it do the duties of a carrier-pigeon, no one thought it strange.
Up in the hills, beside the White Sun River, lived her sister and her
sister’s children; and, by and by, the duck carried messages back and
forth, so that when, in the winter, Ida’s health became delicate, she
had comfort in the solicitude and cheerfulness of her sister, and the
gaiety of the young birds of her nest, who sent Ida many a sprightly
message and tales of their good vagrancy in the hills. In these days
Pierre and Macavoy were little at the Post, save now and then to sit
with Hilton beside the fire, waiting for spring and telling tales. Upon
Hilton had settled that peaceful, abstracted expectancy which shows man
at his best, as he waits for the time when, through the half-lights of
his fatherhood, he shall see the broad fine dawn of motherhood spreading
up the world--which, all being said and done, is that place called Home.
Something gentle came over him while he grew stouter in body and in all
other ways made a larger figure among the people of the West.
As Pierre said, whose wisdom was more to be trusted than his general
morality, “It is strange that most men think not enough of themselves
till a woman shows them how. But it is the great wonder that the woman
does not despise him for it. Quel caractere! She has so often to show
him his way like a babe, and yet she says to him, Mon grand homme! my
master! my lord! Pshaw! I have often thought that women are half saints,
half fools, and men half fools, half rogues. But Quelle vie!--what life!
without a woman you are half a man; with one you are bound to a single
spot in the world, you are tied by the leg, your wing is clipped--you
cannot have all. Quelle vie--what life!”
To this Macavoy said: “Spit-spat! But what the devil good does all yer
thinkin’ do ye, Pierre? It’s argufy here and argufy there, an’ while yer
at that, me an’ the rest av us is squeezin’ the fun out o’ life. Aw, go
‘long wid ye. Y’are only a bit o’ hell and grammar, annyway. Wid all yer
cuttin’ and carvin’ things to see the internals av thim, I’d do more
to the call av a woman’s finger than for all the logic and knowalogy y’
ever chewed--an’ there y’are, me little tailor o’ jur’sprudince!”
“To the finger call of Hilton’s wife, eh?”
Macavoy was not quite sure what Pierre’s enigmatical tone meant. A wild
light showed in his eyes, and his tongue blundered out: “Yis, Hilton’s
wife’s finger, or a look av her eye, or nothin’ at all. Aisy, aisy, ye
wasp! Ye’d go stalkin’ divils in hell for her yerself, so ye would. But
the tongue av ye--but, it’s gall to the tip.”
“Maybe, my king. But I’d go hunting because I wanted; you because you
must. You’re a slave to come and to go, with a Queen’s seal on the
promissory.”
Macavoy leaned back and roared. “Aw, that! The rose o’ the valley--the
joy o’ the wurruld! S’t, Pierre--” his voice grew softer on a sudden, as
a fresh thought came to him--“did y’ ever think that the child might be
dumb like the mother?”
This was a day in the early spring, when the snows were melting in the
hills, and freshets were sweeping down the valleys far and near. That
night a warm heavy rain came on, and in the morning every stream and
river was swollen to twice its size. The mountains seemed to have
stripped themselves of snow, and the vivid sun began at once to colour
the foothills with green. As Pierre and Macavoy stood at their door,
looking out upon the earth cleansing itself, Macavoy suddenly said: “Aw,
look, look, Pierre--her white duck off to the nest on Champak Hill!”
They both shaded their eyes with their hands. Circling round two or
three times above the Post, the duck then stretched out its neck to the
west, and floated away beyond Guidon Hill, and was hid from view.
Pierre, without a word, began cleaning his rifle, while Macavoy smoked,
and sat looking into the distance, surveying the sweet warmth and light.
His face blossomed with colour, and the look of his eyes was that of an
irresponsible child. Once or twice he smiled and puffed in his beard,
but perhaps that was involuntary, or was, maybe, a vague reflection of
his dreams, themselves most vague, for he was only soaking in sun and
air and life.
Within an hour they saw the wild duck-again passing the crest of Guidon,
and they watched it sailing down to the Post, Pierre idly fondling
the gun, Macavoy half roused from his dreams. But presently they were
altogether roused, the gun was put away, and both were on their feet;
for after the pigeon arrived there was a stir at the Post, and Hilton
could be seen running from the store to his house, not far away.
“Something’s wrong there,” said Pierre.
“D’ye think ‘twas the duck brought it?” asked Macavoy.
Without a word Pierre started away towards the Post, Macavoy following.
As they did so, a half-breed boy came from the house, hurrying towards
them.
Inside the house Hilton’s wife lay in her bed, her great hour coming on
before the time, because of ill news from beyond the Guidon. There was
with her an old Frenchwoman, who herself, in her time, had brought many
children into the world, whose heart brooded tenderly, if uncouthly,
over the dumb girl. She it was who had handed to Hilton the paper the
wild duck had brought, after Ida had read it and fallen in a faint on
the floor.
The message that had felled the young wife was brief and awful. A
cloud-burst had fallen on Champak Hill, had torn part of it away, and
a part of this part had swept down into the path that led to the little
house, having been stopped by some falling trees and a great boulder.
It blocked the only way to escape above, and beneath, the river was
creeping up to sweep away the little house. So, there the mother and
her children waited (the father was in the farthest north), facing death
below and above. The wild duck had carried the tale in its terrible
simplicity. The last words were, “There mayn’t be any help for me and
my sweet chicks, but I am still hoping, and you must send a man or many.
But send soon, for we are cut off, and the end may come any hour.”
Macavoy and Pierre were soon at the Post, and knew from Hilton all there
was to know. At once Pierre began to gather men, though what one or many
could do none could say. Eight white men and three Indians watched the
wild duck sailing away again from the bedroom window where Ida lay, to
carry a word of comfort to Champak Hill. Before it went, Ida asked for
Macavoy, and he was brought to her bedroom by Hilton. He saw a pale,
almost unearthly, yet beautiful face, flushing and paling with a coming
agony, looking up at him; and presently two trembling hands made
those mystic signs which are the primal language of the soul. Hilton
interpreted to him this: “I have sent for you. There is no man so big or
strong as you in the north. I did not know that I should ever ask you to
redeem the note. I want my gift, and I will give you your paper with the
Queen’s head on it. Those little lives, those pretty little dears, you
will not see them die. If there is a way, any way, you will save them.
Sometimes one man can do what twenty cannot. You were my wedding-gift: I
claim you now.”
She paused, and then motioned to the nurse, who laid the piece of brown
paper in Macavoy’s hand. He held it for a moment as delicately as if it
were a fragile bit of glass, something that his huge fingers might crush
by touching. Then he reached over and laid it on the bed beside her and
said, looking Hilton in the eyes, “Tell her, the slip av a saint she is,
if the breakin’ av me bones, or the lettin’ av me blood’s what’ll set
all right at Champak Hill, let her mind be aisy--aw yis!”
Soon afterwards they were all on their way--all save Hilton, whose duty
was beside this other danger, for the old nurse said that, “like as
not,” her life would hang upon the news from Champak Hill; and if ill
came, his place was beside the speechless traveller on the Brink.
In a few hours the rescuers stood on the top of Champak Hill, looking
down. There stood the little house, as it were, between two dooms. Even
Pierre’s face became drawn and pale as he saw what a very few hours or
minutes might do. Macavoy had spoken no word, had answered no
question since they had left the Post. There was in his eye the large
seriousness, the intentness which might be found in the face of a brave
boy, who had not learned fear, and yet saw a vast ditch of danger at
which he must leap. There was ever before him the face of the dumb
wife; there was in his ears the sound of pain that had followed him from
Hilton’s house out into the brilliant day.
The men stood helpless, and looked at each other. They could not say
to the river that it must rise no farther, and they could not go to the
house, nor let a rope down, and there was the crumbled moiety of
the hill which blocked the way to the house: elsewhere it was sheer
precipice without trees.
There was no corner in these hills that Macavoy and Pierre did not know,
and at last, when despair seemed to settle on the group, Macavoy, having
spoken a low word to Pierre, said: “There’s wan way, an’ maybe I can an’
maybe I can’t, but I’m fit to try. I’ll go up the river to an aisy p’int
a mile above, get in, and drift down to a p’int below there, thin climb
up and loose the stuff.”
Every man present knew the double danger: the swift headlong river, and
the sudden rush of rocks and stones, which must be loosed on the side of
the narrow ravine opposite the little house. Macavoy had nothing to say
to the head-shakes of the others, and they did not try to dissuade him;
for women and children were in the question, and there they were
below beside the house, the children gathered round the mother, she
waiting--waiting.
Macavoy, stripped to the waist, and carrying only a hatchet and a coil
of rope tied round him, started away alone up the river. The others
waited, now and again calling comfort to the woman below, though their
words could not be heard. About half an hour passed, and then someone
called out: “Here he comes!” Presently they could see the rough head and
the bare shoulders of the giant in the wild churning stream. There was
only one point where he could get a hold on the hillside--the jutting
bole of a tree just beneath them, and beneath the dyke of rock and
trees.
It was a great moment. The current swayed him out, but he plunged
forward, catching at the bole. His hand seized a small branch. It held
him an instant, as he was swung round, then it snapt. But the other hand
clenched the bole, and to a loud cheer, which Pierre prompted, Macavoy
drew himself up. After that they could not see him. He alone was
studying the situation.
He found the key-rock to the dyked slide of earth. To loosen it was to
divert the slide away, or partly away, from the little house. But it
could not be loosened from above, if at all, and he himself would be in
the path of the destroying hill.
“Aisy, aisy, Tim Macavoy,” he said to himself. “It’s the woman and the
darlins av her, an’ the rose o’ the valley down there at the Post!”
A minute afterwards, having chopped down a hickory sapling, he began to
pry at the boulder which held the mass. Presently a tree came crashing
down, and a small rush of earth followed it, and the hearts of the men
above and the woman and children below stood still for an instant.
An hour passed as Macavoy toiled with a strange careful skill and a
superhuman concentration. His body was all shining with sweat, and sweat
dripped like water from his forehead. His eyes were on the keyrock and
the pile, alert, measuring, intent. At last he paused. He looked round
at the hills-down at the river, up at the sky-humanity was shut away
from his sight. He was alone. A long hot breath broke from his pressed
lips, stirring his big red beard. Then he gave a call, a long call that
echoed through the hills weirdly and solemnly.
It reached the ears of those above like a greeting from an outside
world. They answered, “Right, Macavoy!”
Years afterwards these men told how then there came in reply one word,
ringing roundly through the hills--the note and symbol of a crisis, the
fantastic cipher of a soul:
“M’Guire!”
There was a loud booming sound, the dyke was loosed, the ravine split
into the swollen stream its choking mouthful of earth and rock; and a
minute afterwards the path was clear to the top of Champak Hill. To it
came the unharmed children and their mother, who, from the warm peak
sent the wild duck “to the rose o’ the valley,” which, till the message
came, was trembling on the stem of life. But Joy, that marvellous
healer, kept it blooming with a little Eden bird nestling near, whose
happy tongue was taught in after years to tell of the gift of the Simple
King; who had redeemed, on demand, the promissory note for ever.