third great events. Cummins disappeared. Then came the Englishman. For
a time the first of these two overshadowed everything else at the post.
Cummins had gone to prospect a new trap-line, and was to sleep out the
first night. The second night he was still gone. On the third day came
the "Beeg Snow." It began at dawn, thickened as the day went, and
continued to thicken until it became that soft, silent deluge of white
in which no man dared venture a thousand yards from his door. The
Aurora was hidden. There were no stars in the sky at night. Day was
weighted with a strange, noiseless gloom. In all that wilderness there
was not a creature that moved. Sixty hours later, when visible life was
resumed again, the caribou, the wolf and the fox dug themselves up out
of six feet of snow, and found the world changed.
It was at the beginning of the "Beeg Snow" that Jan went to the woman's
cabin. He tapped upon her door with the timidity of a child, and when
she opened it, her great eyes glowing at him in wild questioning, her
face white with a terrible fear, there was a chill at his heart which
choked back what he had come to say. He walked in dumbly and stood with
the snow falling off him in piles, and when Cummins' wife saw neither
hope nor foreboding in his dark, set face she buried her face in her
arms upon the little table and sobbed softly in her despair. Jan strove
to speak, but the Cree in him drove back what was French and "just
white," and he stood in mute, trembling torture. "Ah, the Great God!"
his soul was crying. "What can I do?"
Upon its little cot the woman's child was asleep. Beside the stove
there were a few sticks of wood. He stretched himself until his neck
creaked to see if there was water in the barrel near the door. Then he
looked again at the bowed head and the shivering form at the table. In
that moment Jan's resolution soared very near to the terrible.
"Mees Cummin, I go hunt for heem!" he cried. "I go hunt for heem--an'
fin' heem!"
He waited another moment, and then backed softly toward the door.
"I hunt for heem!" he repeated, fearing that she had not heard.
She lifted her face, and the beating of Jan's heart sounded to him like
the distant thrumming of partridge wings. Ah, the Great God--would he
ever forget that look! She was coming to him, a new glory in her eyes,
her arms reaching out, her lips parted! Jan knew how the Great Spirit
had once appeared to Mukee, the half-Cree, and how a white mist, like a
snow veil, had come between the half-breed's eyes and the wondrous
thing he beheld. And that same snow veil drifted between Jan and the
woman. Like in a vision he saw her glorious face so near to him that
his blood was frightened into a strange, wonderful sensation that it
had never known before. He felt the touch of her sweet breath, he heard
her passionate prayer, he knew that one of his rough hands was clasped
in both her own--and he knew, too, that their soft, thrilling warmth
would remain with him until he died, and still go into Paradise with
him.
When he trudged back into the snow, knee-deep now, he sought Mukee, the
half-breed. Mukee had suffered a lynx bite that went deep into the
bone, and Cummins' wife had saved his hand. After that the savage in
him was enslaved to her like an invisible spirit, and when Jan slipped
on his snowshoes to set out into the deadly chaos of the "Beeg Storm"
Mukee was ready to follow. A trail through the spruce forest led them
to the lake across which Jan knew that Cummins had intended to go.
Beyond that, a matter of six miles or so, there was a deep and lonely
break between two mountainous ridges in which Cummins believed he might
find lynx. Indian instinct guided the two across the lake. There they
separated, Jan going as nearly as he could guess into the northwest,
Mukee trailing swiftly and hopelessly into the south, both inspired in
the face of death by the thought of a woman with sunny hair, and with
lips and eyes that had sent many a shaft of hope and gladness into
their desolate hearts.
It was no great sacrifice for Jan, this struggle with the "Beeg Snows"
for the woman's sake. What it was to Mukee, the half-Cree, no man ever
guessed or knew, for it was not until the late spring snows had gone
that they found what the foxes and the wolves had left of him, far to
the south.
A hand, soft and gentle, guided Jan. He felt the warmth of it and the
thrill of it, and neither the warmth nor the thrill grew less as the
hours passed and the snow fell deeper. His soul was burning with a joy
that it had never known. Beautiful visions danced in his brain, and
always he heard the woman's voice praying to him in the little cabin,
saw her eyes upon him through that white snow veil! Ah, what would he
not give if he could find the man, if he could take Cummins back to his
wife, and stand for one moment more with her hands clasping his, her
joy flooding him with a sweetness that would last for all time! He
plunged fearlessly into the white world beyond the lake, his wide
snowshoes sinking ankle-deep at every step. There was neither rock nor
tree to guide him, for everywhere was the heavy ghost-raiment of the
Indian God. The balsams were bending under it, the spruces were
breaking into hunchback forms, the whole world was twisted in noiseless
torture under its increasing weight, and out through the still terror
of it all Jan's voice went in wild echoing shouts. Now and then he
fired his rifle, and always he listened long and intently. The echoes
came back to him, laughing, taunting, and then each time fell the
mirthless silence of the storm. Night came, a little darker than the
day, and Jan stopped to build a fire and eat sparingly of his food, and
to sleep. It was still night when he aroused himself and stumbled on.
Never did he take the weight of his rifle from his right hand or
shoulder, for he knew this weight would shorten the distance traveled
at each step by his right foot, and would make him go in a circle that
would bring him back to the lake. But it was a long circle. The day
passed. A second night fell upon him, and his hope of finding Cummins
was gone. A chill crept in where his heart had been so warm, and
somehow that soft pressure of a woman's hand upon his seemed to become
less and less real to him. The woman's prayers were following him, her
heart was throbbing with its hope in him--and he had failed! On the
third day, when the storm was over, Jan staggered hopelessly into the
post. He went straight to the woman, disgraced, heartbroken. When he
came out of the little cabin he seemed to have gone mad. A wondrously
strange thing had happened. He had spoken not a word, but his failure
and his sufferings were written in his face, and when Cummins' wife saw
and understood she went as white as the underside of a poplar leaf in a
clouded sun. But that was not all. She came to him, and clasped one of
his half-frozen hands to her bosom, and he heard her say, "God bless
you forever, Jan! You have done the best you could!" The Great God--was
that not reward for the risking of a miserable, worthless life such as
his? He went to his shack and slept long, and dreamed, sometimes of the
woman, and of Cummins and Mukee, the half-Cree.
On the first crust of the new snow came the Englishman up from Fort
Churchill, on Hudson's Bay. He came behind six dogs, and was driven by
an Indian, and he bore letters to the factor which proclaimed him
something of considerable importance at the home office of the Company,
in London. As such he was given the best bed in the factor's rude home.
On the second day he saw Cummins' wife at the Company's store, and very
soon learned the history of Cummins' disappearance.
That was the beginning of the real tragedy at the post. The wilderness
is a grim oppressor of life. To those who survive in it the going out
of life is but an incident, an irresistible and natural thing,
unpleasant but without horror. So it was with the passing of Cummins.
But the Englishman brought with him something new, as the woman had
brought something new, only in this instance it was an element of life
which Jan and his people could not understand, an element which had
never found a place, and never could, in the hearts and souls of the
post. On the other hand, it promised to be but an incident to the
Englishman, a passing adventure in pleasure common to the high and
glorious civilization from which he had come. Here again was that
difference of viewpoint, the eternity of difference between the middle
and the end of the earth. As the days passed, and the crust grew deeper
upon the "Beeg Snows," the tragedy progressed rapidly toward finality.
At first Jan did not understand. The others did not understand. When
the worm of the Englishman's sin revealed itself it struck them with a
dumb, terrible fear.
The Englishman came from among women. For months he had been in a
torment of desolation. Cummins' wife was to him like a flower suddenly
come to relieve the tantalizing barrenness of a desert, and with the
wiles and soft speech of his kind he sought to breathe its fragrance.
In the weeks that followed the flower seemed to come nearer to him, and
this was because Jan and his people had not as yet fully measured the
heart of the woman, and because the Englishman had not measured Jan and
his people he talked a great deal when enthused by the warmth of the
box stove and his thoughts. So human passions were set at play. Because
the woman knew nothing of what was said about the box stove she
continued in the even course of her pure life, neither resisting nor
encouraging the newcomer, yet ever tempting him with that sweetness
which she gave to all alike, and still praying in the still hours of
night that Cummins would return to her. As yet there was no suspicion
in her soul. She accepted the Englishman's friendship. His sympathy for
her won him a place in her recognition of things good and true. She did
not hear the false note, she saw no step that promised evil. Only Jan
and his people saw and understood the one-sided struggle, and shivered
at the monstrous evil of it. At least they thought they saw and
understood, which was enough. Like so many faithful beasts they were
ready to spring, to rend flesh, to tear life out of him who threatened
the desecration of all that was good and pure and beautiful to them,
and yet, dumb in their devotion and faith, they waited and watched for
a sign from the woman. The blue eyes of Cummins' wife, the words of her
gentle lips, the touch of her hands had made law at the post. She,
herself, had become the omniscience of all that was law to them, and if
she smiled upon the Englishman, and talked with him, and was pleased
with him, that was only one other law that she had made for them to
respect. So they were quiet, evaded the Englishman as much as possible,
and watched--always watch ed.
These were days when something worse than disease was eating at the few
big honest hearts that made up the life at the post. The search for
Cummins never ceased, and always the woman was receiving hope. Now it
was Williams who went far into the South, and brought back word that a
strange white man had been seen among the Indians; then it was Thoreau,
the Frenchman, who skirted the edge of the Barren Lands three days into
the West, and said that he had found the signs of strange campfires.
And always Jan was on the move, to the South, the North, the East and
the West. The days began to lengthen. It was dawn now at eight o'clock
instead of nine, the silvery white of the sun was turning day by day
more into the glow of fire, and for a few minutes at midday the snow
softened and water dripped from the roofs.
Jan knew what it meant. Very soon the thick crust of the "Beeg Snow"
would drop in, and they would find Cummins. They would bring what was
left of him back to the post. And then--what would happen then?
Every day or two Jan found some pretext that took him to the little log
cabin. Now it was to convey to the woman a haunch of a caribou he had
slain. Again it was to bring her child a strange plaything from the
forest. More frequently it was to do the work that Cummins would have
done. He seldom went within the low door, but stood outside, speaking a
few words, while Cummins' wife talked to him. But one morning, when the
sun was shining down with the first promising warmth of spring, the
woman stepped hack from the door and asked him in.
"I want to tell you something, Jan," she said softly. "I have been
thinking about it for a long time. I must find some work to do. I must
do something--to earn--money."
Jan's eyes leaped straight to hers in sudden horror.
"Work!"
The word fell from him as if in its utterance there was something of
crime. Then he stood speechless, awed by the look in her eyes, the hard
gray pallor that came into her face.
"May God bless you for all you have done, Jan, and may God bless the
others! I want you to take that word to them from me. But he will never
come back, Jan--never. Tell the men that I love them as brothers, and
always shall love them, but now that I know he is dead I can no longer
live as a drone among them. I will do anything. I will make your coats,
do your washing and mend your moccasins. To-morrow I begin my first
work--for money."
He heard what she said after that as if in a dream. When he went out
into the day again, with her word to his people, he knew that in some
way which he could not understand this big, cold world had changed for
him. To-morrow Cummins' wife was to begin writing letters for the
Englishman! His eyes glittered, his hands clenched themselves upon his
breast, and all the blood in him submerged itself in one wild
resistless impulse. An hour later Jan and his four dogs were speeding
swiftly into the South.
The next day the Englishman went to the woman's cabin. He did not
return in the afternoon. And that same afternoon, when Cummins' wife
came into the Company's store, a quick flush shot into her cheeks and
the glitter of blue diamonds into her eyes when she saw the Englishman
standing there. The man's red face grew redder, and he shifted his
gaze. When Cummins' wife passed him she drew her skirt close to her,
and there was the poise of a queen in her head, the glory of mother and
wife and womanhood, the living, breathing essence of all that was
beautiful in Jan's "honor of the Beeg Snows." But Jan, twenty miles to
the south, did not know.
He returned on the fourth night and went quietly to his little shack in
the edge of the balsam forest. In the glow of the oil lamp which he
lighted he rolled up his treasure of winter-caught furs into a small
pack. Then he opened his door and walked straight and fearlessly toward
the cabin of Cummins' wife. It was a pale, glorious night, and Jan
lifted his face to its starry skies and filled his lungs near to
bursting with its pure air, and when he was within a few steps of the
woman's door he burst into a wild snatch of triumphant forest song. For
this was a new Jan who was returning to her, a man who had gone out
into the solitudes and fought a great battle with the elementary things
in him, and who, because of his triumph over these things, was filled
with the strength and courage to live a great lie. The woman heard his
voice, and recognized it. The door swung open, wide and brimful of
light, and in it stood Cummins' wife, her child hugged close in her
arms.
Jan crowed close up out of the starry gloom.
"I fin' heem, Mees Cummins--I fin' heem nint' miles back in Cree
wigwam--with broke leg. He come home soon--he sen' great love--an'
THESE!"
And he dropped his furs at the woman's feet....
"Ah, the Great God!" cried Jan's tortured soul when it was all over.
"At least she shall not work for the dirty Englishman."
First he awoke the factor, and told him what he had done. Then he went
to Williams, and after that, one by one, these three visited the four
other white and part white men at the post. They lived very near to the
earth, these seven, and the spirit of the golden rule was as natural to
their living as green sap to the trees. So they stood shoulder to
shoulder to Jan in a scheme that appalled them, and in the very first
day of this scheme they saw the woman blossoming forth in her old
beauty and joy, and at times fleeting visions of the old happiness at
the post came to these lonely men who were searing their souls for her.
But to Jan one vision came to destroy all others, and as the old light
returned to the woman's eyes, the glad smile to her lips, the sweetness
of thankfulness and faith into her voice, this vision hurt him until he
rolled and tossed in agony at night, and by day his feet were never
still. His search for Cummins now had something of madness in it. It
was his one hope--where to the other six there was no hope. And one day
this spark went out of him. The crust was gone. The snow was settling.
Beyond the lake he found the chasm between the two mountains, and,
miles of this chasm, robbed to the bones of flesh, he found Cummins.
The bones, and Cummins' gun, and all that was left of him, he buried in
a crevasse.
He waited until night to return to the post. Only one light was burning
when he came out into the clearing, and that was the light in the
woman's cabin. In the edge of the balsams he sat down to watch it, as
he had watched it a hundred nights before. Suddenly something came
between him and the light. Against the cabin he saw the shadow of a
human form, and as silently as the steely flash of the Aurora over his
head, as swiftly as a lean deer, he sped through the gloom of the
forest's edge and came up behind the home of the woman and her child.
With the caution of a lynx, his head close to the snow, he peered
around the end of the logs. It was the Englishman who stood looking
through the tear in the curtained window! Jan's moccasined feet made no
sound. His hand fell as gently as a child's upon the Englishman's arm.
"Thees is not the honor of the Beeg Snows!" he whispered. "Come."
A sickly pallor filled the Englishman's face. But Jan's voice was soft
and dispassionate, his touch was velvety in its hint, and he went with
the guiding hand away from the curtained window, smiling in a
companionable way. Jan's teeth gleamed back. The Englishman chuckled.
Then Jan's hands changed. They flew to the thick reddening throat of
the man from civilization, and without a sound the two sank together
upon the snow. It was many minutes before Jan rose to his feet. The
next day Williams set out for Fort Churchill with word for the
Company's home office that the Englishman had died in the "Beeg Snow,"
which was true.
The end was not far away now. Jan was expecting it day by day, hour by
hour. But it came in a way that he did not expect. A month had gone,
and Cummins had not come up from among the Crees. At times there was a
strange light in the woman's eyes as she questioned the men at the
post. Then, one day, the factor's son told Jan that she wanted to see
him in the little cabin at the other end of the clearing.
A shiver went through him as he came to the door. It was more than a
spirit of unrest in Jan to-day, more than suspicion, more than his old
dread of that final moment of the tragedy he was playing, which would
condemn him to everlasting perdition in the woman's eyes. It was pain,
poignant, terrible--something which he could not name, something upon
which he could place his hand, and yet which filled him with a desire
to throw himself upon his face in the snow and sob out his grief as he
had seen the little children do. It was not dread, but the torment of
reality, that gripped him now, and when he faced the woman he knew why.
There had come a terrible change, but a quiet change, in Cummins' wife.
The luster had gone from her eyes. There was a dead whiteness in her
face that went to the roots of her shimmering hair, and as she spoke to
Jan she clutched one hand upon her bosom, which rose and fell as Jan
had seen the breast of a mother lynx rise and fall in the last torture
of its death.
"Jan," she panted, "Jan--you have lied to me!"
Jan's head dropped. The worn caribou skin of his coat crumpled upon his
breast. His heart died. And yet he found voice, soft, low, simple.
"Yes, me lie!"
"You--you lied to me!"
"Yes--me--lie--"
His head dropped lower. He heard the sobbing breath of the woman, and
gently his arm crooked itself, and his fingers rose slowly, very
slowly, toward the hilt of his hunting knife.
"Yes--Mees Cummins--me lie--"
There came a sudden swift, sobbing movement, and the woman was at Jan's
feet, clasping his hand to her bosom as she had clasped it once before
when he had gone out to face death for her. But this time the snow veil
was very thick before Jan's eyes, and he did not see her face. Only he
heard.
"Bless you, dear Jan, and may God bless you evermore! For you have been
good to me, Jan--so good--to me--"
And he went out into the day again a few moments later, leaving her
alone in her great grief, for Jan was a man in the wild and mannerless
ways of a savage world, and he knew not how to comfort in the fashion
of that other world which had other conceptions and another
understanding of what was to him the "honor of the Beeg Snows." A week
later the woman announced her intention of returning to her people, for
the dome of the earth had grown sad and lonely and desolate to her now
that Cummins was forever gone. Sometimes the death of a beloved friend
brings with it the sadness that spread like a pall over Jan and those
others who had lived very near to contentment and happiness for nearly
two years, only each knew that this grief of his would be as enduring
as life itself. For a brief space the sweetest of all God's things had
come among them, a pure woman who brought with her the gentleness and
beauty and hallowed thoughts of civilization in place of its
iniquities, and the pictures in their hearts were imperishable.
The parting was as simple and as quiet as when the woman had come. They
went to the little cabin where the sledge dogs stood harnessed.
Hatless, silent, crowding back their grief behind grim and lonely
countenances, they waited for Cummins' wife to say good-bye. The woman
did not speak. She held up her child for each man to kiss, and the baby
babbled meaningless things into the bearded faces that it had come to
know and love, and when it came to Williams' turn he whispered, "Be a
good baby, be a good baby." And when it was all over the woman crushed
the child to her breast and dropped sobbing upon the sledge, and Jan
cracked his whip and shouted hoarsely to the dogs, for it was Jan who
was to drive her to civilization. Long after they had disappeared
beyond the clearing those who remained stood looking at the cabin; and
then, with a dry, strange sob in his throat, Williams led the way
inside. When they came out Williams brought a hammer with him, and
nailed the door tight.
"Mebby she'll come back some day," he said.
That was all, but the others understood.
For nine days Jan raced his dogs into the South. On the tenth they came
to Le Pas. It was night when they stopped before the little log hotel,
and the gloom hid the twitching in Jan's face.
"You will stay here--to-night?" asked the woman.
"Me go back--now," said Jan.
Cummins' wife came very close to him. She did not urge, for she, too,
was suffering the torture of this last parting with the "honor of the
Beeg Snows." It was not the baby's face that came to Jan's now, but the
woman's. He felt the soft touch of her lips, and his soul burst forth
in a low, agonized cry.
"The good God bless you, and keep you, and care for you evermore, Jan,"
she whispered. "Some day we will meet again."
And she kissed him again, and lifted the child to him, and Jan turned
his tired dogs back into the grim desolation of the North, where the
Aurora was lighting his way feebly, and beckoning to him, and telling
him that the old life of centuries and centuries ago was waiting for
him there.
BUCKY SEVERN
Father Brochet had come south from Fond du Lac, and Weyman, the
Hudson's Bay Company doctor, north through the Geikee River country.
They had met at Severn's cabin, on the Waterfound. Both had come on the
same mission--to see Severn; one to keep him from dying, if that was
possible, one to comfort him in the last hour, if death came. Severn
insisted on living. Bright-eyed, hollow-cheeked, with a racking cough
that reddened the gauze handkerchief the doctor had given him, he sat
bolstered up in his cot and looked out through the open door with glad
and hopeful gaze. Weyman had arrived only half an hour before. Outside
was the Indian canoeman who had helped to bring him up.
It was a glorious day, such as comes in its full beauty only in the far
northern spring, where the air enters the lungs like sharp, warm wine,
laden with the tang of spruce and balsam, and the sweetness of the
bursting poplar-buds.
"It was mighty good of you to come up," Severn was saying to the
doctor. "The company has always been the best friend I've ever
had--except one--and that's why I've hung to it all these years,
trailing the sledges first as a kid, you know, then trapping, running,
and--oh, Lord!"