“Swell, you see,” said Jacques Parfaite, as he gave Whiskey Wine, the
leading dog, a cut with the whip and twisted his patois to the uses of
narrative, “he has been alone there at the old Fort for a long time.
I remember when I first see him. It was in the summer. The world smell
sweet if you looked this way or that. If you drew in your breath quick
from the top of a hill you felt a great man. Ridley, the chief trader,
and myself have come to the Fort on our way to the Mackenzie River. In
the yard of the Fort the grass have grown tall, and sprung in the cracks
under the doors and windows; the Fort have not been use for a long time.
Once there was plenty of buffalo near, and the caribou sometimes; but
they were all gone--only a few. The Indians never went that way, only
when the seasons were the best. The Company have close the Post; it did
not pay. Still, it was pleasant after a long tramp to come to even an
empty fort. We know dam’ well there is food buried in the yard or under
the floor, and it would be droll to open the place for a day--Lost Man’s
Tavern, we called it. Well--”
“Well, what?” said Sir Duke Lawless, who had travelled up to the Barren
Grounds for the sake of adventure and game; and, with his old friend,
Shon M’Gann, had trusted himself to the excellent care of Jacques
Parfaite, the half-breed.
Jacques cocked his head on one side and shook it wisely and
mysteriously. “Tres bien, we trailed through the long grass, pried
open the shutters and door, and went in. It is cool in the north of
an evening, as you know. We build a fire, and soon there is very fine
times. Ridley pried up the floor, and we found good things. Holy! but it
was a feast. We had a little rum also. As we talk and a great laugh swim
round, there come a noise behind us like shuffling feet. We got to our
legs quick. Mon Dieu, a strange sight! A man stand looking at us
with something in his face that make my fingers cold all at once--a
look--well you would think it was carved in stone--it never change.
Once I was at Fort Garry; the Church of St. Mary is there. They have a
picture in it of the great scoundrel Judas as he went to hang himself.
Judas was a fool--what was thirty dollars!--you give me hunder’ to take
you to the Barren Grounds. Pah!”
The half-breed chuckled, shook his head sagely, swore half-way through
his vocabulary at Whiskey Wine, gratefully received a pipe of tobacco
from Shon M’Gann, and continued: “He come in on us slow and still, and
push out long thin hands, the fingers bent like claws, towards the pot.
He was starving. Yes, it was so; but I nearly laugh. It was spring--a
man is a fool to starve in the spring. But he was differen’. There was
a cause. The factor give him soup from the pot and a little rum. He was
mad for meat, but that would have kill him--yes. He did not look at you
like a man.
“When you are starving, you are an animal. But there was something more
with this.--He made the flesh creep, he was so thin, and strange, and
sulky--eh, is that a word when the face looks dark and never smiles? So.
He would not talk. When we ask him where he come from, he points to the
north; when we ask him where he is going, he shake his head as he not
know. A man is mad not to know where he travel to up here; something
comes quick to him unless, and it is not good to die too soon. The
trader said, ‘Come with us.’ He shake his head, No. ‘P’r’aps you want to
stay here,’ said Ridley loud, showing his teeth all in a minute. He nod.
Then the trader laugh thick in his throat and give him more soup. After,
he try to make the man talk; but he was stubborn like that dirty Whiskey
Wine--ah, sacre bleu!”
Whiskey Wine had his usual portion of whip and anathema before Jacques
again took up the thread. “It was no use. He would not talk. When the
trader get angry once more, he turned to me, and the look in his face
make me sorry. I swore--Ridley did not mind that, I was thick friends
with him. I say, ‘Keep still. It is no good. He has had bad times. He
has been lost, and seen mad things. He will never be again like when God
make him.’ Very well, I spoke true. He was like a sun dog.”
“What’s that ye say, Parfaite?” said Shon--“a sun dog?”
Sir Duke Lawless, puzzled, listened eagerly for the reply.
The half-breed in delight ran before them, cracking his whip and
jingling the bells at his knees. “Ah, that’s it! It is a name we have
for some. You do not know? It is easy. In the high-up country”--pointing
north”--you see sometimes many suns. But it is not many after all;
it is only one; and the rest are the same as your face in
looking-glasses--one, two, three, plenty. You see?”
“Yes,” said Sir Duke, “reflections of the real sun.” Parfaite tapped him
on the arm. “So: you have the thing. Well, this man is not himself--he
have left himself where he seen his bad times. It makes your flesh creep
sometimes when you see the sun dogs in the sky--this man did the same.
You shall see him tonight.”
Sir Duke looked at the little half-breed, and wondered that the product
of so crude a civilisation should be so little crude in his imagination.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Nothing happened. But the man could not sleep. He sit before the fire,
his eyes moving here and there, and sometimes he shiver. Well, I watch
him. In the morning we leave him there, and he has been there ever
since--the only man at the Fort. The Indians do not go; they fear him;
but there is no harm in him. He is old now. In an hour we’ll be there.”
The sun was hanging, with one shoulder up like a great red peering
dwarf, on the far side of a long hillock of stunted pines, when the
three arrived at the Fort. The yard was still as Parfaite had described
it--full of rank grass, through which one path trailed to the open door.
On the stockade walls grass grew, as though where men will not live like
men Nature labours to smother. The shutters of the window were not open;
light only entered through narrow openings in them, made for the needs
of possible attacks by Indians in the far past. One would have sworn
that anyone dwelling there was more like the dead than the living. Yet
it had, too, something of the peace of the lonely graveyard. There was
no one in the Fort; but there were signs of life--skins piled here
and there, a few utensils, a bench, a hammock for food swung from the
rafters, a low fire burning in the chimney, and a rude spear stretched
on the wall.
“Sure, the place gives you shivers!” said Shon. “Open go these windows.
Put wood on the fire, Parfaite; cook the meat that we’ve brought, and
no other, me boy; and whin we’re filled wid a meal and the love o’ God,
bring in your Lost Man, or Sun Dog, or whativer’s he by name or nature.”
While Parfaite and Shon busied themselves, Lawless wandered out with his
gun, and, drawn on by the clear joyous air of the evening, walked along
a path made by the same feet that had travelled the yard of the Fort.
He followed it almost unconsciously at first, thinking of the strange
histories that the far north hoards in its fastnesses, wondering what
singular fate had driven the host of this secluded tavern--farthest from
the pleasant south country, nearest to the Pole--to stand, as it were,
a sentinel at the raw outposts of the world. He looked down at the trail
where he was walking with a kind of awe, which even his cheerful common
sense could not dismiss.
He came to the top of a ridge on which were a handful of meagre trees.
Leaning on his gun, he looked straight away into the farthest distance.
On the left was a blurred edge of pines, with tops like ungainly
tendrils feeling for the sky. On the right was a long bare stretch of
hills veiled in the thin smoke of the evening, and between, straight
before him, was a wide lane of unknown country, billowing away to where
it froze into the vast archipelago that closes with the summit of the
world. He experienced now that weird charm which has drawn so many into
Arctic wilds and gathered the eyes of millions longingly. Wife, child,
London, civilisation, were forgotten for the moment. He was under a
spell which, once felt, lingers in your veins always.
At length his look drew away from the glimmering distance, and he
suddenly became conscious of human presence. Here, almost at his feet,
was a man, also looking out along that slumbering waste. He was dressed
in skins, his arms were folded across his breast, his chin bent low, and
he gazed up and out from deep eyes shadowed by strong brows. Lawless saw
the shoulders of the watcher heave and shake once or twice, and then
a voice with a deep aching trouble in it spoke; but at first he could
catch no words. Presently, however, he heard distinctly, for the man
raised his hands high above his head, and the words fell painfully: “Am
I my brother’s keeper?”
Then a low harsh laugh came from him, and he was silent again. Lawless
did not move. At last the man turned round, and, seeing him standing
motionless, his gun in his hands, he gave a hoarse cry. Then he stood
still. “If you have come to kill, do not wait,” he said; “I am ready.”
At the sound of Lawless’s reassuring voice he recovered, and began, in
stumbling words, to excuse himself. His face was as Jacques Parfaite
had described it: trouble of some terrible kind was furrowed in it, and,
though his body was stalwart, he looked as if he had lived a century.
His eyes dwelt on Sir Duke Lawless for a moment, and then, coming
nearer, he said, “You are an Englishman?”
Lawless held out his hand in greeting, yet he was not sorry when the
other replied: “The hand of no man in greeting. Are you alone?”
When he had been told, he turned towards the Fort, and silently they
made their way to it. At the door he turned and said to Lawless, “My
name--to you--is Detmold.”
The greeting between Jacques and his sombre host was notable for
its extreme brevity; with Shon McGann for its hesitation--Shon’s
impressionable Irish nature was awed by the look of the man, though he
had seen some strange things in the north. Darkness was on them by this
time, and the host lighted bowls of fat with wicks of deer’s tendons,
and by the light of these and the fire they ate their supper. Parfaite
beguiled the evening with tales of the north, always interesting to
Lawless; to which Shon added many a shrewd word of humour--for he
had recovered quickly from his first timidity in the presence of the
stranger.
As time went on Jacques saw that their host’s eyes were frequently fixed
on Sir Duke in a half-eager, musing way, and he got Shon away to bed and
left the two together.
“You are a singular man. Why do you live here?” said Lawless. Then he
went straight to the heart of the thing. “What trouble have you had, of
what crime are you guilty?”
The man rose to his feet, shaking, and walked to and fro in the room
for a time, more than once trying to speak, but failing. He beckoned
to Lawless, and opened the door. Lawless took his hat and followed him
along the trail they had travelled before supper until they came to the
ridge where they had met. The man faced the north, the moon glistening
coldly on his grey hair. He spoke with incredible weight and slowness:
“I tell you--for you are one who understands men, and you come from
a life that I once knew well. I know of your people. I was of good
family--”
“I know the name,” said Sir Duke quietly, at the same time fumbling
in his memory for flying bits of gossip and history which he could not
instantly find.
“There were two brothers of us. I was the younger. A ship was going
to the Arctic Sea.” He pointed into the north. “We were both young and
ambitious. He was in the army, I the navy. We went with the expedition.
At first it was all beautiful and grand, and it seemed noble to search
for those others who had gone into that land and never come back. But
our ship got locked in the ice, and then came great trouble. A year went
by and we did not get free; then another year began.... Four of us set
out for the south. Two died. My brother and I were left--”
Lawless exclaimed. He now remembered how general sympathy went out to a
well-known county family when it was announced that two of its members
were lost in the Arctic regions.
Detmold continued: “I was the stronger. He grew weaker and weaker. It
was awful to live those days: the endless snow and cold, the long nights
when you could only hear the whirring of meteors, the bright sun which
did not warm you, nor even when many suns, the reflections of itself,
followed it--the mocking sun dogs, no more the sun than I am what my
mother brought into the world.... We walked like dumb men, for the
dreadful cold fills the heart with bitterness. I think I grew to hate
him because he could not travel faster, that days were lost, and death
crept on so pitilessly. Sometimes I had a mad wish to kill him. May you
never know suffering that begets such things! I laughed as I sat beside
him, and saw him sink to sleep and die.... I think I could have saved
him. When he was gone I--what do men do sometimes when starvation is
on them, and they have a hunger of hell to live? I did that shameless
thing--and he was my brother!... I lived, and was saved.”
Lawless shrank away from the man, but words of horror got no farther
than his throat. And he was glad afterwards that it was so; for when
he looked again at this woful relic of humanity before him he felt a
strange pity.
“God’s hand is on me to punish,” said the man. “It will never be lifted.
Death were easy: I bear the infamy of living.”
Lawless reached out and caught him gently by the shoulders. “Poor
fellow! poor Detmold!” he said. For an instant the sorrowful face
lighted, the square chin trembled, and the hands thrust out towards
Lawless, but suddenly dropped.
“Go,” he said humbly, “and leave me here. We must not meet again... I
have had one moment of respite.... Go.”
Without a word, Lawless turned and made his way to the Fort. In the
morning the three comrades started on their journey again; but no one
sped them on their way or watched them as they went.