A CREE RUNNER BRINGS NEWS
"Don't you worry about that lad, Jessie. He's got as many lives as a
cat--and then some. I've knew him ever since he was knee-high to a
grasshopper."
Brad Stearns was talking. He sat in the big family room at the McRae
house and puffed clouds of tobacco, smoke to the rafters.
"Meaning Mr. Beresford?" asked Jessie demurely. She was patching a
pair of leather trousers for Fergus and she did not raise her eyes
from the work.
"Meanin' Tom Morse," the old-timer said. "Not but what Beresford's a
good lad too. Sand in his craw an' a kick like a mule in his fist. But
he was brought up somewheres in the East, an' o' course he's a leetle
mite less tough than Tom. No, sir. Tom'll bob up one o' these here
days good as ever. Don't you worry none about that. Why, he ain't been
gone but--lemme see, a week or so better'n four months. When a man's
got to go to the North Pole an' back, four months--"
Beneath her long lashes the girl slanted a swift look at Brad. "That
makes twice you've told me in two minutes not to worry about Mr.
Morse. Do I look peaked? Am I lying awake nights thinking about him,
do you think?" She held up the renewed trousers and surveyed her
handiwork critically.
Brad gazed at her through narrowed lids. "I'll be doggoned if I know
whether you are or you ain't. I'd bet a pair o' red-topped boots it's
one of them lads. 'Course Beresford's got a red coat an' spurs that
jingle an' a fine line o' talk. Tom he ain't got ary one o' the three.
But if it's a man you're lookin' for, a two-fisted man who--"
A wave of mirth crossed Jessie's face like a ripple on still water.
Her voice mimicked his. "Why do you want to saw off an old maid on
that two-fisted man you've knew ever since he was knee-high to a
grasshopper? What did he ever do to you that was so doggoned mean?"
"Now looky here, you can laugh at me all you've a mind to. All I'm
sayin' is--"
"Oh, I'm not laughing at you," she interposed hurriedly with an
assumption of anxiety her bubbling eyes belied. "If you could show me
how to get your two-fisted man when he comes back--or even the one
with the red coat and the spurs and the fine line of talk--"
"I ain't sayin' he ain't a man from the ground up too," Brad broke in.
"Considerin' his opportunities he's a right hefty young fellow. But
Tom Morse he--"
"That's it exactly. Tom Morse he--"
"Keep right on makin' fun o' me. Tom Morse he's a man outa ten
thousand, an' I don't know as I'm coverin' enough population at that."
"And you're willing to make a squaw-man of him. Oh, Mr. Stearns!"
He looked at her severely. "You got no license to talk thataway,
Jessie McRae. You're Angus McRae's daughter an' you been to Winnipeg
to school. Anyways, after what Lemoine found out--"
"What did he find out? Pierre Roubideaux couldn't tell him anything
about the locket and the ring. Makoye-kin said he got it from his
brother who was one of a party that massacred an American outfit of
trappers headed for Peace River. He doesn't know whether the picture
of the woman in the locket was that of one of the women in the camp.
All we've learned is that I look like a picture of a white woman found
in a locket nearly twenty years ago. That doesn't take us very far,
does it?"
"Well, Stokimatis may know something. When Onistah comes back with
her, we'll get the facts straight."
McRae came into the room. "News, lass," he cried, and his voice rang.
"A Cree runner's just down frae Northern Lights. He says the lads were
picked up by some trappers near Desolation. One o' them's been badly
hurt, but he's on the mend. Which yin I dinna ken. What wi' starvation
an' blizzards an' battles they've had a tough time. But the word is
they're doing fine noo."
"West?" asked Brad. "Did they get him?"
"They got him. Dragged him back to Desolation with a rope round his
neck. Hung on to him while they were slam-bangin' through blizzards
an' runnin' a race wi' death to get back before they starved. Found
him up i' the Barrens somewhere, the story is. He'll be hangit at the
proper time an' place. It's in the Word. 'They that take the sword
shall perish with the sword.' Matthew 26:52."
Brad let out the exultant rebel yell he had learned years before in
the Confederate army. "What'd I tell you about that boy? Ain't I
knowed him since he was a li'l' bit of a tad? He's a go-getter, Tom
is. Y'betcha!"
Jessie's heart was singing too, but she could not forbear a friendly
gibe at him. "I suppose Win Beresford wasn't there at all. He hadn't a
thing to do with it, had he?"
The old cowpuncher raised a protesting hand. "I ain't said a word
against him. Now have I, McRae? Nothin' a-tall. All I done said was
that I been tellin' everybody Tom would sure enough bring back Bully
West with him."
The girl laughed. "You're daffy about that boy you brought up by hand.
I'll not argue with you."
"They're both good lads," the Scotchman summed up, and passed to his
second bit of news. "Onistah and Stokimatis are in frae the Blackfoot
country. They stoppit at the store, but they'll be alang presently. I
had a word wi' Onistah. We'll wait for him here."
"Did he say what he'd found out?" Jessie cried.
"Only that he had brought back the truth. That'll be the lad knockin'
at the door."
Jessie opened, to let in Onistah and his mother. Stokimatis and the
girl gravitated into each other's arms, as is the way with women who
are fond of each other. The Indian is stolid, but Jessie had the habit
of impetuosity, of letting her feelings sweep her into demonstration.
Even the native women she loved were not proof against it.
McRae questioned Stokimatis.
Without waste of words the mother of Onistah told the story she had
traveled hundreds of miles to tell.
Sleeping Dawn was not the child of her sister. When the attack had
been made on the white trappers bound for Peace River, the mother of a
baby had slipped the infant under an iron kettle. After the massacre
her sister had found the wailing little atom of humanity. The Indian
woman had recently lost her own child. She hid the babe and afterward
was permitted to adopt it. When a few months later she died of
smallpox, Stokimatis had inherited the care of the little one. She had
named it Sleeping Dawn. Later, when the famine year came, she had sold
the child to Angus McRae.
That was all she knew. But it was enough for Jessie. She did not know
who her parents had been. She never would know, beyond the fact that
they were Americans and that her mother had been a beautiful girl
whose eyes laughed and danced. But this knowledge made a tremendous
difference to her. She belonged to the ruling race and not to the
métis, just as much as Win Beresford and Tom Morse did.
She tried to hide her joy, was indeed ashamed of it. For any
expression of it seemed like a reproach to Matapi-Koma and Onistah and
Stokimatis, to her brother Fergus and in a sense even to her father.
None the less her blood beat fast. What she had just found out meant
that she could aspire to the civilization of the whites, that she
had before her an outlook, was not to be hampered by the limitations
imposed upon her by race.
The heart in the girl sang a song of sunshine dancing on grass, of
meadowlarks flinging out their carefree notes of joy. Through it like
a golden thread ran for a motif little melodies that had to do with a
man who had staggered into Fort Desolation out of the frozen North,
sick and starved and perhaps wounded, but still indomitably captain of
his soul.