THE CLOSE OF THE SEASON
For days the journey continued through the ever deepening gorge. The
stern grey walls remained unbroken, except for occasional sentry trees
which had survived the years of storm and flood. Carpets of Arctic
lichen sometimes clothed their nakedness, and even wide wastes of
noisome fungus. But these things had no power to depress Marcel and
Keeko; the Indians, too, passed them all unheeded. They were concerned
alone with the perils of the waters which were often almost
overwhelming.
The journey northward was one continuous struggle by day, and the daylit
night was passed in the profound slumbers of exhausted bodies, with the
canoes beached on some low foreshore dank with an atmosphere of hideous
decay.
For Keeko and the Indians it seemed as if the land was rising ever
higher and higher, and the endless waterway was cutting its course
deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth. But there was no
question. Marcel was piloting them to a hunting ground of his own, and
this passage was the highway to it.
Only once did Keeko protest. It was a protest that was natural enough.
But Marcel swept it aside without scruple.
"I call this 'Hell's Gate,'" he said, with a ready laugh. "Sounds
rotten? But I always figger you need to pass through 'some' hell to make
Paradise. We're in a mighty big country, and a-top of us are hundreds,
and maybe thousands, of miles of forests that never heard tell of man.
Wait. There's a break soon, just beyond the big rapids. That's where
these darn old walls of rock fade right out, and make way for a lake
that's like a sea."
It was his undisturbed confidence that broke the constant threat of
imagination. This north country was Marcel's home. He knew no other. So
they drove on, and on, to the goal that he had set.
The great rapids came at them as he had promised. And, in turn, they
were passed on that narrow margin which is the line drawn between safety
and destruction. Then came the mouth of the gorge, and the stretch of
open river where it debouched upon the "lake that was like a sea."
For Keeko it was all like some wonderful dream with Marcel the magician
who inspired it.
Two days later they had landed in a country whose relation to that which
Keeko knew was only in the swarming flies and mosquitoes, and the keen
air, which, even in the height of the open season, warned her of the
terrors which must reign when the aurora lit the night of winter.
"Guess this is Paradise," Marcel explained, in answer to Keeko's
expressed delight at the wide openness of it all, and at the sight of
the sparse, lean Arctic grass which replaced the monotony of the
shadowed river. "Guess it's a matter of contrasts," he went on. "It's
kind of light, I guess, and it makes you think it's green. There's bush,
or scrub, and bluffs of timber. But there's other things. It's mostly a
sort of tundra and muskeg. There's more flies to the square inch than
you'd reckon there's room for. But it's the home of the silver fox
that's never been hunted."
His words were lost upon the girl. Her whole attention had become
absorbed with her first glance out across the lake. She was staring at a
range of tremendous hills far away to the north-east, and her wonder-lit
eyes were held by a strange phenomenon that filled the sky.
It was a blaze of ruddy light tinting a world of frothing cloud. To her
it looked like a stormy oasis in the steely blue of an almost cloudless
sky. It might have been the splendid light of an angry sunset, only that
the sun was shining directly behind her. She pointed at it.
"That!" she cried, in a startled, hushed voice. "What's that?"
Marcel regarded the scene for some silent moments. It was a spectacle
that stirred him. He was closer to Nature than he knew. The primitive
was deeply rooted in him for all the pains at which Uncle Steve had been
to widen his outlook through the learning which his dead father had left
behind. Here was a caldron of fire playing its reflection upon a tumult
of cloud. The cloud itself stood unaccounted in a perfect sky.
But the answer came readily. Marcel knew those streaks of red and gold,
those rosy tints in contrast against the threatening cloud. They were
the lights of Unaga. The lights from the Heart of Unaga, the dread Heart
that haunted the Indian mind, and the secret of which Uncle Steve had so
recently disclosed to him.
What could he say to this girl to whom he could not lie?
Doubt and hesitancy passed. These things could not long exist in a
nature such as his.
"Guess I haven't seen it ever like that before," he said. Then he
corrected himself. "Not in my recollection. But I know what it is.
That's the Heart of Unaga. It's a heart always afire. It's real red-hot
fire that no man's ever had the nerve to get near. The Eskimo know it.
And it scares them to death. They sort of reckon it's the world where
the devil reigns. The hell that some folks reckon is real, and
hot--and--hellish. But the feller that banks on learning and isn't
worried by superstition'll just hand you the plain truth. It's a
volcano, a real, live volcano which they reckon is the heart of Unaga."
The awe in Keeko's eyes only deepened.
"It's--it's just amazing," she cried. Then she added with a deep breath,
"It's--dreadful."
* * * * *
From the moment of their landing on the shores of the lake Marcel and
Keeko became absorbed in the work that had brought them thither.
The wonder of the fiery Heart of Unaga swiftly passed, and only in the
brief moments over the camp-fire its fascination claimed them. At such
moments neither was quite free from the superstition they derided. For
Keeko it was a mystery of the unknown. For Marcel it was, perhaps, the
key to the whole life effort of the man who was his second father.
But the fur hunt was theirs, and with this no mystery of Unaga was
permitted to interfere. Marcel was determined on a result such as he had
never desired before. He dreamed of silver fox, he thought of silver
fox. Silver and black fox had become the sole purpose of his life.
So they beat this great, wide, half-created valley with trap and gun.
They beat it up with all the skill of a life of experience, and reward
came plentifully. It came rapidly, too. Sometimes it was almost
overwhelming.
It was a land teeming with game of every description known to the
regions north of 60 deg.. The neighbourhood of the lake was alive with
feather. Geese swarmed in their thousands, and there were moments when
the sky was black with their legions. Duck, too, of every description
had winged up from the south to the virgin waters of the North as Nature
reluctantly released these hunting-grounds from the bonds of winter.
Beaver and musk-ox, caribou and black-tail, reindeer and all the legions
of lesser furs abounded. Thus, in consequence, it was the normal
hunting-ground of the pariah of the beast world. Fox swarmed to the
feast that was spread out. And it was the fox alone that needed to fear
the coming of the fur hunter.
The slaughter of fox was immense, but selection was discriminate. Only
the silver or black were troubled about, and these were collected with a
care and skill that ensured the perfection of the pelts. Marcel was
better than his word. He lived on the trail, and the Indians were given
no rest. Keeko, borne on the uplift of success, knew no weariness when
the effort promised treasure. They were working against time. Each of
them knew it. And Marcel had the whole season mapped out almost to the
hour.
So the days drew out into weeks, and the sun dropped lower and lower
towards the horizon. Steadily the nights grew longer, and the working
hours less. With each passing day the store of perfect pelts mounted.
They were pegged out and dried, and set ready for storing at the moment
the frost should bite through the air and hold them imperishable against
their journey down to Keeko's home.
Life was almost uneventful in the monotony of success. Rains came, and
gales blew down off the distant hills to the north-east. There were
times when the great lake justified Marcel's description of it. It raged
like a storm-swept sea, and white capped waves broke upon its bosom. But
with the passing of the storm and the flattening influence of the rain,
or under the breaking forth of the chilly Northern sunshine, peace was
restored, and the calm looked never to have been broken.
But for all the vagaries of climate, for all the unvarying nature of
their labours, there was no monotony in the hearts of Marcel and Keeko.
With every passing hour they came nearer and nearer to each other. The
youth in them was driving them to that splendid ultimate, which is the
horizon of all things between man and woman. There were no doubts. And
their only fear was the nearing of that dreaded day when parting must
come, and each would be forced to pursue the journey alone.
The parting was in the back of their minds almost from the moment of
their arrival at the valley of the lake. Each day that passed was marked
off in Keeko's mind. It was always one step nearer to the time when she
would be forced to bid farewell to the glad light of Marcel's happy
eyes, and the sound of his deep-toned, cheerful voice.
She knew. She had known it from those first happy days of their
preparations for this northward adventure. And she admitted it without
shame. She had learned to love the boy with a depth and strength she had
never thought to yield to any man.
Love? It had seemed so far removed from her life, and from those with
whom her life had been associated. She had thought a thousand times of
those men with whom she had been brought into contact. And the very idea
of love had only filled her with nausea. Her experience, from her
step-father down to the loafing "sharps" of Seal Bay, had firmly planted
in her mind the conviction that the men who haunted the shadows north
of 60 deg. were only creatures whose quality of soul dared not display
itself in the sunlight of truth and honesty.
Yet here, here where the world's dark secrets were more deeply hidden
than anywhere else, even with Marcel's simple confession of a hidden
purpose, secret movements, she had found a man before whom her woman's
heart had at once prostrated itself. It was amazing even to her. She
found no explanation even in her moments of heart searching. More than
that she had no desire to explain or excuse. The wonderful dream of life
had come true. She had yielded unbidden, and nothing she could think of
in life could undo the work that had been accomplished almost in the
first moments of their meeting.
So it was she watched the store of pelts mount up, she watched the
growing laze of the sun as it rose less and less above the horizon, and
she noted with dread the steady lengthening of the brief summer night.
Soon, far too soon, must come that parting which would rob her life of
the light which had so suddenly broken through its shadows.
And Marcel was no less troubled. But his nature refused to admit the end
which Keeko saw ahead. His was a splendid optimism that refused defeat.
He had the tryst he had established in his mind. And far back behind his
ingenuous eyes the purpose lurked that should necessity arise he would
cut every tie that bound his life, no matter at what cost, and pursue to
its logical end the wonderful dream that had been vouchsafed to him.
With determination such as this Marcel delayed the start of the return
journey to the last possible moment. And Keeko set no obstacle in the
way. She asked no margin of time for accident by the way. She was
prepared to accept all chances. The last moments before the permanent
freeze up must see her back at her home. For the rest this wild, uncouth
land was a radiant garden of delight to her.
But time waits no more for lovers than it waits for those whose hope is
dying with the years. In the Northern wilderness time must be calculated
almost to the second, and so the limit of safety was reached in a
dalliance that had nothing to do with the necessities of their trade.
The moment had come when the return must begin, or the disaster of
winter would terminate for ever their youthful dream. The night frosts
had done their work upon the pelts. The day was no longer sufficiently
warm to seriously undo it. So the canoes floated laden at their moorings
as Keeko had dreamed they would, and the last night on the shores of the
lake was already closing down.
The camp-fire of driftwood and peat was glowing ruddily. The Indians
were already deep within their fur-lined bags, and slumbering with the
utter indifference engendered of complete weariness of body. Marcel and
Keeko were squatting beside each other over the cheering warmth which
kept the night chills at bay. Marcel was smoking. Keeko had no such
comfort.
"I'd say Lorson Harris'll need to hand you something a heap better than
five thousand dollars," Marcel observed with a laugh of genuine
satisfaction and without turning from his contemplation of the fire.
"Where'll you keep it so----?"
Keeko looked up with a start. Her thoughts had been far removed from the
profit of her trade.
"At the bank at Seal Bay," she said hastily, lest her abstraction should
be noticed.
"You keep it all--there?"
"No." Keeko shook her head. "But I'll have to--this. It's just too big.
I'd be scared to carry it with me."
Marcel laughed again.
"That 'scare' again," he said. Then he turned, and for a moment gazed at
the perfect profile which showed up against the growing dusk. "Say, you
make me laff. Scare? You don't know what it means."
Keeko's eyes lit responsively as she turned and looked into his strong,
fire-lit face.
"Not now," she said quietly. "When I'm down there alone
it's--different."
"Alone?" Marcel removed his pipe from between his strong teeth. Then he
nodded. "Yes," he agreed, "maybe it's different then."
Just for a moment the impulse was strong in him to fling all
responsibility to the winds. He wanted to crush her in his great arms
and tell her all those things which life ordains that woman shall yearn
to hear. But the impulse was resisted. He knew it had to be.
"But you don't ever need to be alone again," he said simply. "You're
forgetting. There's that darn old moose. That's a sign. You've only to
send word, or come right along up. You see, the folks who're alone are
the folks who've got no one to go to when things get awry. I guess you
can't ever feel just alone now--whatever happens."
Keeko's eyes were very soft, very tender as she looked up into Marcel's
face.
"It's good to hear that. It's good to feel that," she said gently. "And
I do feel it," she added with a deep sigh. "I've a whole heap to thank
God for, and, if it's not wrong to put it that way, still more to thank
you for. I just don't know how to say it all. But just as long as I live
I----"
"Cut it right out, Keeko. Cut it right out."
Marcel spoke hastily. He spoke almost roughly. He was in no frame of
mind to listen complacently to any words of thanks from this girl.
Thanks? If thanks were due it was from him. She had given him her trust
and confidence. She had given him moments in his life such as he had
never dreamed could fall to the lot of any man. In the firelight he
flushed deeply at the thought, and again impulse stirred and nearly
overwhelmed him.
"I just can't stand thanks from you, Keeko," he said impulsively.
"Thanks only need to come from folks whom you help feeling you don't
fancy doing it. You've handed me the sort of happiness that makes a
feller feel like getting onto his hands and knees and thanking God for.
Say, I can't talk to you same as I fancy to, and I guess it's not my
fault. You don't know who I am, or a thing about me. And you can't hand
me much more about yourself. Still, I sort of feel the time'll come when
we can open out things. What I want to say is, you've handed me a trust
that isn't hardly natural. You've chased this country with a feller who
might be any old thing from a 'hold-up' to a 'gun-artist,' and they're
around in plenty north of 60 deg.. And it's the big white heart inside you
made you act that way, and I sort of feel that big white heart is still
my care, even after we've made good-bye at that old moose head. I wish
to death I could say the things I fancy right, but I just can't, and
it's no use in talking. But don't you ever dare to hand me thanks, or
I'll have to get right up and break things."
Keeko's reply was a low thrilling laugh, full of a gentle gladness which
she cared not if he read.
"Maybe you haven't said the things the way you fancy saying them," she
said, in her gentle fashion. "But you've said them the way I'd have you
say them. But you're right. There's folks in a person's life you can't
thank, you haven't a right to thank, and maybe that's how we're fixed.
You've jumped right into my life with your big body and generous heart,
and I--well, I guess you haven't found things easier because I've butted
into yours. Still, the thing's happened, and it makes me kind of glad.
Some day--But there--what's the use?"
The temptation was irresistible. Marcel flung out one great hand and
closed it over the hands the girl was holding out to the fire.
"That's it," he said hoarsely, while his body thrilled at the girl's
warm clasp in his. "What's the use? Neither you nor I can say the things
we feel. That's so. There's a great big God of this Northland looking on
and fixing things the way He sees. As you say 'Some day'! Meanwhile
there's the start back to-morrow morning. Just get right along and
sleep, and dream good, and be sure you're aren't alone in the
world--ever again."