clanked as he raised his hands to his face. In that moment his dazed
senses adjusted themselves. The cabin was full of smoke. It partly
blinded him, but through it he could see tongues of fire shooting
toward the ceiling. He could hear the crackling of burning pitch, and
he yelled wildly to Brokaw. In an instant the sergeant was on his feet.
He rushed to the table, where he had placed a pail of water the evening
before, and Billy heard the hissing of the water as it struck the
flaming wall.
"Never mind that," he shouted. "The shack's built of pitch cedar. We've
got to get out!" Brokaw groped his way to him through the smoke and
began fumbling at the chain about his ankles.
"I can't--find--the key--" he gasped chokingly. "Here grab hold of me!"
He caught Billy under the arms and dragged him to the door. As he
opened it the wind came in with a rush and behind them the whole cabin
burst into a furnace of flame. Twenty yards from the cabin he dropped
Billy in the snow, and ran back. In that seething room of smoke and
fire was everything on which their lives depended, food, blankets, even
their coats and caps and snowshoes. But he could go no farther than the
door. He returned to Billy, found the key in his pocket, and freed him
from the chain about his ankles. Billy stood up. As he looked at Brokaw
the glass in the window broke and a sea of flame sprouted through. It
lighted up their faces. The sergeant's jaw was set hard. His leathery
face was curiously white. He could not keep from shivering. There was a
strange smile on Billy's face, and a strange look in his eyes. Neither
of the two men had undressed for sleep, but their coats, and caps, and
heavy mittens were in the flames.
Billy rattled his handcuffs. Brokaw looked him squarely in the eyes.
"You ought to know this country," he said. "What'll we do?"
"The nearest post is sixty miles from here," said Billy.
"I know that," replied Brokaw. "And I know that Thoreau's cabin is only
twenty miles from here. There must be some trapper or Indian shack
nearer than that. Is there?" In the red glare of the fire Billy smiled.
His teeth gleamed at Brokaw. It was a lull of the wind, and he went
close to Brokaw, and spoke quietly, his eyes shining more and more with
that strange light that had come into them.
"This is going to be a big sight easier than hanging, or going to jail
for half my life, Brokaw--an' you don't think I'm going to be fool
enough to miss the chance, do you? It ain't hard to die of cold. I've
almost been there once or twice. I told you last night why I couldn't
give up hope--that something good for me always came on her birthday,
or near to it. An' it's come. It's forty below, an' we won't live the
day out. We ain't got a mouthful of grub. We ain't got clothes enough
on to keep us from freezing inside the shanty, unless we had a fire.
Last night I saw you fill your match bottle and put it in your coat
pocket. Why, man, WE AIN'T EVEN GOT A MATCH!"
In his voice there was a thrill of triumph. Brokaw's hands were
clenched, as if some one had threatened to strike him.
"You mean--" he gasped.
"Just this," interrupted Billy, and his voice was harder than Brokaw's
now. "The God you used to pray to when you was a kid has given me a
choice, Brokaw, an' I'm going to take it. If we stay by this fire, an'
keep it up, we won't die of cold, but of starvation. We'll be dead
before we get half way to Thoreau's. There's an Indian shack that we
could make, but you'll never find it--not unless you unlock these irons
and give me that revolver at your belt. Then I'll take you over there
as my prisoner. That'll give me another chance for South America--an'
the kid an' home." Brokaw was buttoning the thick collar of his shirt
close up about his neck. On his face, too, there came for a moment a
grim and determined smile.
"Come on," he said, "we'll make Thoreau's or die."
"Sure," said Billy, stepping quickly to his side. "I suppose I might
lie down in the snow, an' refuse to budge. I'd win my game then,
wouldn't I? But we'll play it--on the square. It's Thoreau's, or die.
And it's up to you to find Thoreau's."
He looked back over his shoulder at the burning cabin as they entered
the edge of the forest, and in the gray darkness that was preceding
dawn he smiled to himself. Two miles to the south, in a thick swamp,
was Indian Joe's cabin. They could have made it easily. On their way to
Thoreau's they would pass within a mile of it. But Brokaw would never
know. And they would never reach Thoreau's. Billy knew that. He looked
at the man hunter as he broke trail ahead of him--at the pugnacious
hunch of his shoulders, his long stride, the determined clench of his
hands, and wondered what the soul and the heart of a man like this must
be, who in such an hour would not trade life for life. For almost
three-quarters of an hour Brokaw did not utter a word. The storm had
broke. Above the spruce tops the sky began to clear. Day came slowly.
And it was growing steadily colder. The swing of Brokaw's arms and
shoulders kept the blood in them circulating, while Billy's manacled
wrists held a part of his body almost rigid. He knew that his hands
were already frozen. His arms were numb, and when at last Brokaw paused
for a moment on the edge of a frozen stream Billy thrust out his hands,
and clanked the steel rings.
"It must be getting colder," he said. "Look at that."
The cold steel had seared his wrists like hot iron, and had pulled off
patches of skin and flesh. Brokaw looked, and hunched his shoulders.
His lips were blue. His cheeks, ears, and nose were frost-bitten. There
was a curious thickness in his voice when he spoke.
"Thoreau lives on this creek," he said. "How much farther is it?"
"Fifteen or sixteen miles," replied Billy. "You'll last just about
five, Brokaw. I won't last that long unless you take these things off
and give me the use of my arms."
"To knock out my brains when I ain't looking," growled Brokaw. "I
guess--before long--you'll be willing to tell where the Indian's shack
is." He kicked his way through a drift of snow to the smoother surface
of the stream. There was a breath of wind in their faces, and Billy
bowed his head to it. In the hours of his greatest loneliness and
despair Billy had kept up his fighting spirit by thinking of pleasant
things, and now, as he followed in Brokaw's trail, he began to think of
home. It was not hard for him to bring up visions of the girl wife who
would probably never know how he had died. He forgot Brokaw. He
followed in the trail mechanically, failing to notice that his captor's
pace was growing steadily slower, and that his own feet were dragging
more and more like leaden weights. He was back among the old hills
again, and the sun was shining, and he heard laughter and song. He saw
Jeanne standing at the gate in front of the little white cottage,
smiling at him, and waving Baby Jeanne's tiny hand at him as he looked
back over his shoulder from down the dusty road. His mind did not often
travel as far as the mining camp, and he had completely forgotten it
now. He no longer felt the sting and pain of the intense cold. It was
Brokaw who brought him back into the reality of things. The sergeant
stumbled and fell in a drift, and Billy fell over him. For a moment the
two men sat half buried in the snow, looking at each other without
speaking. Brokaw moved first. He rose to his feet with an effort. Billy
made an attempt to follow him. After three efforts he gave it up, and
blinked up into Brokaw's face with a queer laugh. The laugh was almost
soundless. There had come a change in Brokaw's face. Its determination
and confidence were gone. At last the iron mask of the Law was broken,
and there shone through it something of the emotions and the
brotherhood of man. He was fumbling in one of his pockets, and drew out
the key to the handcuffs. It was a small key, and he held it between
his stiffened fingers with difficulty. He knelt down beside Billy. The
keyhole was filled with snow. It took a long time--ten minutes--before
the key was fitted in and the lock clicked. He helped to tear off the
cuffs. Billy felt no sensation as bits of skin and flesh came "with
them. Brokaw gave him a hand, and assisted him to rise. For the first
time he spoke.
"Guess you've got me beat, Billy," he said.
"Where's the Indian's?"
He drew his revolver from its holster and tossed it in the snowdrift.
The shadow of a smile passed grimly over his face. Billy looked about
him. They had stopped where the frozen path of a smaller stream joined
the creek. He raised one of his stiffened arms and pointed to it.
"Follow that creek--four miles--and you'll come to Indian Joe's shack,"
he said.
"And a mile is just about our limit"
"Just about--your's," replied Billy. "I can't make another half. If we
had a fire--"
"IF--" wheezed Brokaw.
"If we had a fire," continued Billy. "We could warm ourselves, an' make
the Indian's shack easy, couldn't we?"
Brokaw did not answer. He had turned toward the creek when one of
Billy's pulseless hands fell heavily on his arm.
"Look here, Brokaw."
Brokaw turned. They looked into each other's eyes.
"I guess mebby you're a man, Brokaw," said Billy quietly. "You've done
what you thought was your duty. You've kept your word to th' law, an' I
believe you'll keep your word with me. If I say the word that'll save
us now will you go back to headquarters an' report me dead?" For a full
half minute their eyes did not waver.
Then Brokaw said:
"No."
Billy dropped his hand. It was Brokaw's hand that fell on his arm now.
"I can't do that," he said. "In ten years I ain't run out the white
flag once. It's something that ain't known in the service. There ain't
a coward in it, or a man who's afraid to die. But I'll play you square.
I'll wait until we're both on our feet, again, and then I'll give you
twenty-four hours the start of me."
Billy was smiling now. His hand reached out. Brokaw's met it, and the
two joined in a grip that their numb fingers scarcely felt.
"Do you know," said Billy softly, "there's been somethin' runnin' in my
head ever since we left the burning cabin. It's something my mother
taught me: 'Do unto others as you'd have others do unto you.' I'm a
d---- fool, ain't I? But I'm goin' to try the experiment, Brokaw, an'
see what comes of it. I could drop in a snowdrift an' let you go on--to
die. Then I could save myself. But I'm going to take your word--an' do
the other thing. I'VE GOT A MATCH."
"A MATCH!"
"Just one. I remember dropping it in my pants pocket yesterday when I
was out on the trail. It's in THIS pocket. Your hand is in better shape
than mine. Get it."
Life had leaped into Brokaw's face. He thrust his hand into Billy's
pocket, staring at him as he fumbled, as if fearing that he had lied.
When he drew his hand out the match was between his fingers.
"Ah!" he whispered excitedly.
"Don't get nervous," warned Billy. "It's the only one."
Brokaw's eyes were searching the low timber along the shore. "There's a
birch tree," he cried. "Hold it--while I gather a pile of bark!"
He gave the match to Billy, and staggered through the snow to the bank.
Strip after strip of the loose bark he tore from the tree. Then he
gathered it in a heap in the shelter of a low-hanging spruce, and added
dry sticks, and still more bark, to it. When it was ready he stood with
his hands in his pockets, and looked at Billy.
"If we had a stone, an' a piece of paper--" he began.
Billy thrust a hand that felt like lifeless lead inside his shirt, and
fumbled in a pocket he had made there. Brokaw watched him with red,
eager eyes. The hand reappeared, and in it was the buckskin wrapped
photograph he had seen the night before, Billy took off the buckskin.
About the picture there was a bit of tissue paper. He gave this and the
match to Brokaw.
"There's a little gun-file in the pocket the match came from," he said.
"I had it mending a trapchain. You can scratch the match on that."
He turned so that Brokaw could reach into the pocket, and the man
hunter thrust in his hand. When he brought it forth he held the file.
There was a smile on Billy's frostbitten face as he held the picture
for a moment under Brokaw's eyes. Billy's own hands had ruffled up the
girl's shining curls an instant before the picture was taken, and she
was laughing at him when the camera clicked.
"It's all up to her, Brokaw," Billy said gently. "I told you that last
night. It was she who woke me up before the fire got us. If you ever
prayed--pray a little now. FOR SHE'S GOING TO STRIKE THAT MATCH!"
He still looked at the picture as Brokaw knelt beside the pile he had
made. He heard the scratch of the match on the file, but his eyes did
not turn. The living, breathing face of the most beautiful thing in the
world was speaking to him from out of that picture. His mind was dazed.
He swayed a little. He heard a voice, low and sweet, and so distant
that it came to him like the faintest whisper. "I am coming--I am
coming, Billy--coming--coming--coming--" A joyous cry surged up from
his soul, but it died on his lips in a strange gasp. A louder cry
brought him back to himself for a moment. It was from Brokaw. The
sergeant's face was terrible to behold. He rose to his feet, swaying,
his hands clutched at his breast. His voice was thick--hopeless.
"The match--went--out--" He staggered up to Billy, his eyes like a
madman's. Billy swayed dizzily. He laughed, even as he crumpled down in
the snow. As if in a dream he saw Brokaw stagger off on the frozen
trail. He saw him disappear in his hopeless effort to reach the
Indian's shack. And then a strange darkness closed him in, and in that
darkness he heard still the sweet voice of his wife. It spoke his name
again and again, and it urged him to wake up--wake up--WAKE UP! It
seemed a long time before he could respond to it. But at last he opened
his eyes. He dragged himself to his knees, and looked first to find
Brokaw. But the man hunter had gone--forever. The picture was still in
his hand. Less distinctly than before he saw the girl smiling at him.
And then--at his back--he heard a strange and new sound. With an effort
he turned to discover what it was.
The match had hidden an unseen spark from Brokaw's eyes. From out of
the pile of fuel was rising a pillar of smoke and flame.
THE HONOR OF HER PEOPLE
"It ees not so much--What you call heem?--leegend, thees honor of the
Beeg Snows!" said Jan softly.
He had risen to his feet and gazed placidly over the crackling
box-stove into the eyes of the red-faced Englishman.
"Leegend is lie! Thees is truth!"
There was no lack of luster in the black eyes that roved inquiringly
from the Englishman's bantering grin to the others in the room. Mukee,
the half Cree, was sitting with his elbows on his knees gazing with
stoic countenance at this new curiosity who had wandered four hundred
miles northward from civilization. Williams, the Hudson's Bay man who
claimed to be all white, was staring hard at the red side of the stove,
and the factor's son looked silently at Jan. He and the half-breed
noted the warm glow in the eyes that rested casually upon the
Englishman.
"It ees truth--thees honor of the Beeg Snows!" said Jan again, and his
moccasined feet fell in heavy, thumping tread to the door.
That was the first time he had spoken that evening, and not even the
half Cree, or Williams, or the factor's son guessed how the blood was
racing through his veins. Outside he stood with the pale, cold glow of
the Aurora Borealis shining upon him, and the limitless wilderness,
heavy in its burden of snow, reaching out into the ghost-gray fabric of
the night. The Englishman's laugh followed him, boisterous and grossly
thick, and Jan moved on,--wondering how much longer the half Cree and
Williams and the factor's son would listen to the things that this man
was saying of the most beautiful thing that had ever come into their
lives.
"It ees truth, I swear, by dam'--thees honor of what he calls the 'Beeg
Snows!'" persisted Jan to himself, and he set his back to the factor's
office and trudged through the snow.
When he came to the black ledge of the spruce and balsam forest he
stopped and looked back. It was an hour past bedtime at the post. The
Company's store loomed up silent and lightless. The few log cabins
betrayed no signs of life. Only in the factor's office, which was the
Company's haven for the men of the wilderness, was there a waste of
kerosene, and that was because of the Englishman whom Jan was beginning
to hate. He stared back at the one glowing window with a queer
thickening in his throat and a clenching of the hands in the pockets of
his caribou-skin coat. Then he looked long and wistfully at a little
cabin which stood apart from the rest, and to himself he whispered
again what he had said to the Englishman. Until to-night--or, perhaps,
until two weeks ago--Jan had been satisfied with his world. It was a
big, passionless world, mostly of snow and ice and endless privation,
but he loved it, and there was only a fast-fading memory of another
world in his brain. It was a world of big, honest hearts kept warm
within caribou skins, of moccasined men whom endless solitude had
taught to say little and do much--a world of "Big Snows," as the
Englishman had said, in which Jan and all his people had come very
close to the things which God created. Without the steely gray flash of
those mystery-lights over the Arctic pole Jan would have been homesick;
his soul would have withered and died in anything but this wondrous
land which he knew, with its billion dazzling stars by night and its
eye-blinding brilliancy by day. For Jan, in a way, was fortunate. He
had in him an infinitesimal measure of the Cree, which made him
understand what the winds sometimes whispered in the pine-tops; and a
part of him was French, which added jet to his eyes and a twist to his
tongue and made him susceptible to the beautiful, and the rest was
"just white"--the part of him that could be stirred into such thoughts
and visions as he was now thinking and dreaming of the Englishman.
The "honor of the Beeg Snows" was a part of Jan's soul; it was his
religion, and the religion of those few others who lived with him four
hundred miles from a settlement, in a place where God's name could not
be spelled or written. It meant what civilization could not understand,
and the Englishman could not understand--freezing and slow starvation
rather than theft, and the living of the tenth commandment above all
other things. It came naturally and easily, this "honor of the Beeg
Snows." It was an unwritten law which no man cared or dared to break,
and to Jan, with his Cree and his French and his "just white" blood, it
was in full measure just what the good God meant it to be.
He moved now toward the little isolated cabin, half hidden in its drift
of snow, keeping well in the deep shadows of the spruce and balsam, and
when he stopped again he saw faintly a gleam of light falling in a wan
streak through a big hole in a curtained window. Each night, always
when the twenty-odd souls of the post were deep in slumber, Jan's heart
would come near to bursting with joy at the sight of this grow from the
snow-smothered cabin, for it told him that the most beautiful thing in
the world was safe and well. He heard, suddenly, the slamming of a
door, and the young Englishman's whistle sounded shrill and untuneful
as he went to his room in the factor's house. For a moment Jan
straightened himself rigidly, and there was a strange tenseness in the
thin, dark face that he turned straight up to where the Northern Lights
were shivering in their midnight play. When he looked again at the
light in the little cabin the passion-blood was rushing through his
veins, and he fingered the hilt of the hunting knife in his belt.
The most beautiful thing in the world had come into Jan's life, and the
other lives at the post, just two summers before. Cummins, red-headed,
lithe as a cat, big-souled as the eternal mountain of the Crees and the
best of the Company's hunters, had brought her up as his bride.
Seventeen rough hearts had welcomed them. They had assembled about that
little cabin in which the light was shining, speechless in their
adoration of this woman who had come among them, their caps in their
hands, faces shining, eyes shifting before the glorious ones that
looked at them and smiled at them as the woman shook their hands, one
by one. Perhaps she was not beautiful, as most people judge. But she
was beautiful here--four hundred miles beyond civilization. Mukee, the
half-Cree, had never seen a white woman, for even the factor's wife was
part Chippewayan, and no one of the others went down to the edge of the
southern wilderness more than once each twelve-month or so. Her hair
was brown and soft, and it shone with a sunny glory that reached away
back into their conception of things dreamed of but never seen, her
eyes were as blue as the early snowflowers that came after the spring
floods, and her voice was the sweetest sound that had ever fallen upon
their ears. So these men thought when Cummins first brought home his
wife, and the masterpiece which each had painted in his soul and brain
was never changed. Each week and month added to the deep-toned value of
that picture, as the passing of a century might add to a Raphael or a
Van Dyke. The woman became more human, and less an angel, of course,
but that only made her more real, and allowed them to become acquainted
with her, to talk with her, and to love her more. There was no thought
of wrong--until the Englishman came; for the devotion of these men who
lived alone, and mostly wifeless, was a great passionless love
unhinting of sin, and Cummins and his wife accepted it, and added to it
when they could, and were the happiest pair in all that vast Northland.
The first year brought great changes. The girl--she was scarce more
than budding into womanhood--fell happily into the ways of her new
life. She did nothing that was elementally unusual--nothing more than
any pure woman reared in the love of a God and home would have done. In
her spare hours she began to teach the half dozen wild little children
about the post, and every Sunday told them wonderful stories out of the
Bible. She ministered to the sick, for that was a part of her code of
life. Everywhere she carried her glad smile, her cheery greeting, her
wistful earnestness to brighten what seemed to her the sad and lonely
lives of these silent, worshipful men of the North. And she succeeded,
not because she was unlike other millions of her kind, but because of
the difference between the fortieth and the sixtieth degrees--the
difference in the viewpoint of men who fought themselves into moral
shreds in the big game of life and those who lived a thousand miles
nearer to the dome of the earth. At the end of this first year came the
wonderful event in the history of the Company's post, which had the
Barren Lands at its back door. One day a new life was born into the
little cabin of Cummins and his wife.
After this the silent, wordless worship of Jan and his people was
filled with something very near to pathos. Cummins' wife was a mother.
She was one of them now, a part of their indissoluble existence--a part
of it as truly as the strange lights forever hovering over the Pole, as
surely as the countless stars that never left the night skies, as
surely as the endless forests and the deep snows! There was an added
value to Cummins now. If there was a long and dangerous mission to
perform it was somehow arranged so that he was left behind. Only Jan
and one or two others knew why his traps made the best catch of fur,
for more than once he had slipped a mink of an ermine or a fox into one
of Cummins' traps, knowing that it would mean a luxury or two for the
woman and the baby. And when Cummins left the post, sometimes for a day
and sometimes longer, the mother and her child fell as a brief heritage
to those who remained. The keenest eyes would not have discovered that
this was so.