I
On every hand stretched the forest primeval,--the home of noisy comedy
and silent tragedy. Here the struggle for survival continued to wage
with all its ancient brutality. Briton and Russian were still to overlap
in the Land of the Rainbow's End--and this was the very heart of it--nor
had Yankee gold yet purchased its vast domain. The wolf-pack still clung
to the flank of the cariboo-herd, singling out the weak and the big with
calf, and pulling them down as remorselessly as were it a thousand,
thousand generations into the past. The sparse aborigines still
acknowledged the rule of their chiefs and medicine men, drove out bad
spirits, burned their witches, fought their neighbors, and ate their
enemies with a relish which spoke well of their bellies. But it was at
the moment when the stone age was drawing to a close. Already, over
unknown trails and chartless wildernesses, were the harbingers of the
steel arriving,--fair-faced, blue-eyed, indomitable men, incarnations of
the unrest of their race. By accident or design, single-handed and in
twos and threes, they came from no one knew whither, and fought, or died,
or passed on, no one knew whence. The priests raged against them, the
chiefs called forth their fighting men, and stone clashed with steel; but
to little purpose. Like water seeping from some mighty reservoir, they
trickled through the dark forests and mountain passes, threading the
highways in bark canoes, or with their moccasined feet breaking trail for
the wolf-dogs. They came of a great breed, and their mothers were many;
but the fur-clad denizens of the Northland had this yet to learn. So
many an unsung wanderer fought his last and died under the cold fire of
the aurora, as did his brothers in burning sands and reeking jungles, and
as they shall continue to do till in the fulness of time the destiny of
their race be achieved.
It was near twelve. Along the northern horizon a rosy glow, fading to
the west and deepening to the east, marked the unseen dip of the midnight
sun. The gloaming and the dawn were so commingled that there was no
night,--simply a wedding of day with day, a scarcely perceptible blending
of two circles of the sun. A kildee timidly chirped good-night; the
full, rich throat of a robin proclaimed good-morrow. From an island on
the breast of the Yukon a colony of wild fowl voiced its interminable
wrongs, while a loon laughed mockingly back across a still stretch of
river.
In the foreground, against the bank of a lazy eddy, birch-bark canoes
were lined two and three deep. Ivory-bladed spears, bone-barbed arrows,
buckskin-thonged bows, and simple basket-woven traps bespoke the fact
that in the muddy current of the river the salmon-run was on. In the
background, from the tangle of skin tents and drying frames, rose the
voices of the fisher folk. Bucks skylarked with bucks or flirted with
the maidens, while the older squaws, shut out from this by virtue of
having fulfilled the end of their existence in reproduction, gossiped as
they braided rope from the green roots of trailing vines. At their feet
their naked progeny played and squabbled, or rolled in the muck with the
tawny wolf-dogs.
To one side of the encampment, and conspicuously apart from it, stood a
second camp of two tents. But it was a white man's camp. If nothing
else, the choice of position at least bore convincing evidence of this.
In case of offence, it commanded the Indian quarters a hundred yards
away; of defence, a rise to the ground and the cleared intervening space;
and last, of defeat, the swift slope of a score of yards to the canoes
below. From one of the tents came the petulant cry of a sick child and
the crooning song of a mother. In the open, over the smouldering embers
of a fire, two men held talk.
"Eh? I love the church like a good son. _Bien_! So great a love that
my days have been spent in fleeing away from her, and my nights in
dreaming dreams of reckoning. Look you!" The half-breed's voice rose to
an angry snarl. "I am Red River born. My father was white--as white as
you. But you are Yankee, and he was British bred, and a gentleman's son.
And my mother was the daughter of a chief, and I was a man. Ay, and one
had to look the second time to see what manner of blood ran in my veins;
for I lived with the whites, and was one of them, and my father's heart
beat in me. It happened there was a maiden--white--who looked on me with
kind eyes. Her father had much land and many horses; also he was a big
man among his people, and his blood was the blood of the French. He said
the girl knew not her own mind, and talked overmuch with her, and became
wroth that such things should be.
"But she knew her mind, for we came quick before the priest. And quicker
had come her father, with lying words, false promises, I know not what;
so that the priest stiffened his neck and would not make us that we might
live one with the other. As at the beginning it was the church which
would not bless my birth, so now it was the church which refused me
marriage and put the blood of men upon my hands. _Bien_! Thus have I
cause to love the church. So I struck the priest on his woman's mouth,
and we took swift horses, the girl and I, to Fort Pierre, where was a
minister of good heart. But hot on our trail was her father, and
brothers, and other men he had gathered to him. And we fought, our
horses on the run, till I emptied three saddles and the rest drew off and
went on to Fort Pierre. Then we took east, the girl and I, to the hills
and forests, and we lived one with the other, and we were not
married,--the work of the good church which I love like a son.
"But mark you, for this is the strangeness of woman, the way of which no
man may understand. One of the saddles I emptied was that of her
father's, and the hoofs of those who came behind had pounded him into the
earth. This we saw, the girl and I, and this I had forgot had she not
remembered. And in the quiet of the evening, after the day's hunt were
done, it came between us, and in the silence of the night when we lay
beneath the stars and should have been one. It was there always. She
never spoke, but it sat by our fire and held us ever apart. She tried to
put it aside, but at such times it would rise up till I could read it in
the look of her eyes, in the very intake of her breath.
"So in the end she bore me a child, a woman-child, and died. Then I went
among my mother's people, that it might nurse at a warm breast and live.
But my hands were wet with the blood of men, look you, because of the
church, wet with the blood of men. And the Riders of the North came for
me, but my mother's brother, who was then chief in his own right, hid me
and gave me horses and food. And we went away, my woman-child and I,
even to the Hudson Bay Country, where white men were few and the
questions they asked not many. And I worked for the company a hunter, as
a guide, as a driver of dogs, till my woman-child was become a woman,
tall, and slender, and fair to the eye.
"You know the winter, long and lonely, breeding evil thoughts and bad
deeds. The Chief Factor was a hard man, and bold. And he was not such
that a woman would delight in looking upon. But he cast eyes upon my
woman-child who was become a woman. Mother of God! he sent me away on a
long trip with the dogs, that he might--you understand, he was a hard man
and without heart. She was most white, and her soul was white, and a
good woman, and--well, she died.
"It was bitter cold the night of my return, and I had been away months,
and the dogs were limping sore when I came to the fort. The Indians and
breeds looked on me in silence, and I felt the fear of I knew not what,
but I said nothing till the dogs were fed and I had eaten as a man with
work before him should. Then I spoke up, demanding the word, and they
shrank from me, afraid of my anger and what I should do; but the story
came out, the pitiful story, word for word and act for act, and they
marvelled that I should be so quiet.
"When they had done I went to the Factor's house, calmer than now in the
telling of it. He had been afraid and called upon the breeds to help
him; but they were not pleased with the deed, and had left him to lie on
the bed he had made. So he had fled to the house of the priest. Thither
I followed. But when I was come to that place, the priest stood in my
way, and spoke soft words, and said a man in anger should go neither to
the right nor left, but straight to God. I asked by the right of a
father's wrath that he give me past, but he said only over his body, and
besought with me to pray. Look you, it was the church, always the
church; for I passed over his body and sent the Factor to meet my woman-
child before his god, which is a bad god, and the god of the white men.
"Then was there hue and cry, for word was sent to the station below, and
I came away. Through the Land of the Great Slave, down the Valley of the
Mackenzie to the never-opening ice, over the White Rockies, past the
Great Curve of the Yukon, even to this place did I come. And from that
day to this, yours is the first face of my father's people I have looked
upon. May it be the last! These people, which are my people, are a
simple folk, and I have been raised to honor among them. My word is
their law, and their priests but do my bidding, else would I not suffer
them. When I speak for them I speak for myself. We ask to be let alone.
We do not want your kind. If we permit you to sit by our fires, after
you will come your church, your priests, and your gods. And know this,
for each white man who comes to my village, him will I make deny his god.
You are the first, and I give you grace. So it were well you go, and go
quickly."
"I am not responsible for my brothers," the second man spoke up, filling
his pipe in a meditative manner. Hay Stockard was at times as thoughtful
of speech as he was wanton of action; but only at times.
"But I know your breed," responded the other. "Your brothers are many,
and it is you and yours who break the trail for them to follow. In time
they shall come to possess the land, but not in my time. Already, have I
heard, are they on the head-reaches of the Great River, and far away
below are the Russians."
Hay Stockard lifted his head with a quick start. This was startling
geographical information. The Hudson Bay post at Fort Yukon had other
notions concerning the course of the river, believing it to flow into the
Arctic.
"Then the Yukon empties into Bering Sea?" he asked.
"I do not know, but below there are Russians, many Russians. Which is
neither here nor there. You may go on and see for yourself; you may go
back to your brothers; but up the Koyukuk you shall not go while the
priests and fighting men do my bidding. Thus do I command, I, Baptiste
the Red, whose word is law and who am head man over this people."
"And should I not go down to the Russians, or back to my brothers?"
"Then shall you go swift-footed before your god, which is a bad god, and
the god of the white men."
The red sun shot up above the northern sky-line, dripping and bloody.
Baptiste the Red came to his feet, nodded curtly, and went back to his
camp amid the crimson shadows and the singing of the robins.
Hay Stockard finished his pipe by the fire, picturing in smoke and coal
the unknown upper reaches of the Koyukuk, the strange stream which ended
here its arctic travels and merged its waters with the muddy Yukon flood.
Somewhere up there, if the dying words of a ship-wrecked sailorman who
had made the fearful overland journey were to be believed, and if the
vial of golden grains in his pouch attested anything,--somewhere up
there, in that home of winter, stood the Treasure House of the North. And
as keeper of the gate, Baptiste the Red, English half-breed and renegade,
barred the way.
"Bah!" He kicked the embers apart and rose to his full height, arms
lazily outstretched, facing the flushing north with careless soul.