THE THIRST.
Onawa, daughter of Shuswap, vagrant and traitress, she who had brought
disaster upon her own people, continued to reap the reward of all her
constancy to the enemy of her race. Famished and parched, she sank
into a bed of snow, and rested her wildly throbbing head against a
frosted tree. She had not eaten for many hours, her shelter was more
than a league away, and her strength was gone. Her reward also was a
maddening thirst.
After tracking down the Englishmen, watching them in the fall of the
snow, enduring every privation until she had learnt their strength, she
had gone at full speed to the settlement, madly hoping even then that
La Salle might look on her with favour, despite her branded cheeks and
mutilated face. His reward was to give her over to the soldiers, who
had mocked her because she was of the hated race, a savage in their
eyes, and had bound her with a rope and scourged her with the end of
it, and had even struck her with their fists when she halted from
exhaustion, and would have stabbed her to death had she refused to
obey. Thus she received her full reward. And now she could do no more.
Neuralgic pains coursed through her head, until the weight of her hair
became a torment. Feverishly she sucked a handful of snow, but the
awful thirst remained unquenched. The sounds of the chase entered her
ears dimly from that half-lit region ahead, until drowsiness passed
into her body, and her head dropped, and her eyes closed, and the sleep
which moves imperceptibly into death came upon her. Her passionate
heart lowered its beat, her pulses throbbed more sluggishly, as she
drew close to the threshold which separates life and its object from
the world of dreams. Her body collapsed, her head slid down; the soft
snow sucked her in like quicksand.
A figure passed among the slim terebinth columns. Though the sleeper
had brought down her father into dishonour, had betrayed her tribe, and
called the shadow of death across the home of her kindred, her sister
had not forgotten her. The figure approached, bent over the huddled
shape, and shook it roughly back to life.
"Tuschota!" muttered the girl, as her eyes opened upon the immobile
brown face.
"Rise," said the woman. "Lean on me, and I will take you to my hut."
"Leave me here," moaned Onawa. "I would lie until the great sleep
comes."
"I am your sister. I may not leave you thus to die. Yonder food
awaits you, and drink, and the warmth of burning logs."
She assisted Onawa to rise. The girl staggered and clung with dead
hands. Together they passed down the slope, and so came to the cabin
cunningly hidden amid snowy bush. A fire burnt redly, and hard by
stood a stone vessel filled with rice-water. Towards this Onawa
reached her hands, with the cry:
"I am tortured with thirst."
Without a word her sister gave her drink, and watched her while she
gulped at the tepid liquor. Suddenly she put out her hand, and grasped
the vessel, saying:
"See! I have meat ready for you."
Onawa partook of the food like a famished beast, and as strength
returned the former love of life awoke, and she longed to go forth to
renew the hopeless quest; but she felt her sister's eyes reading her
thoughts, and presently she heard that sister's voice:
"It is good to live, Onawa."
She made no reply, but leaned forward, thrusting her hands against the
scarlet wood.
"Even when son and husband are taken away, and the light fails, and all
the ground is dark, it is still good to live," went on the voice. "Why
the good God gives this love of life we may not know."
"Give me more drink," the girl panted.
"Our father shall soon pass into the spirit land," went on the stern
woman, unheeding her request. "He is old, but 'tis not age that saps
his strength. Honour has departed from him. He has lost the headship,
and another fills his office."
Onawa stared sullenly into the leaping heart of the fire.
"As this life continues we find trouble. You have lost beauty, and I a
son. We shall not regain that which we have lost. Sisters in blood we
are, and sisters in unhappiness also."
"I have brought sorrow into your life," muttered Onawa, less in
penitence than defiance.
"And shall do so again. This night you have brought the enemy of my
people out from Acadie. There was a time when you betrayed my son into
the hands of him who now spurns you from his side. That which is done
cannot be undone, and God shall punish."
"Why, then, have you brought me here?" cried Onawa fiercely. "Why did
you not leave me to perish, that you might be rid of me for ever?"
"Remember you not the words that I spoke to you in the grove? I bade
you have in mind that in the time when you should hunger and thirst you
might turn to me. I have not forgotten, though you turned against me
when your heart followed its own longing.
"I grieved for your Richard."
"So the hunter grieves when he by mischance has slain the bear cub
which has strayed. And so he avoids the mother if he loves his life."
At that moment there rang in her steady voice a threat. Onawa looked
up and met a suffering brown face and large quiet eyes. There was no
menace there, nothing but longing for the dead and charity for the
living.
She pressed a hand upon her burning throat. "Give me drink," she
gasped.
Her sister poured some of the rice-water into a smaller vessel. This
she stirred gently with a stick, watching the ruined face of Onawa with
the same patient eyes. Outside the hut a flight of snow birds whirred
from side to side.
"When you have drunk you shall go forth," said Mary Iden deliberately.
"You shall seek to aid my enemy when he strives to strike down my
husband."
Onawa gave a cry. In wondering over her sister's forgiveness she had
forgotten La Salle.
"They may already have met," she muttered.
A stern smile crossed her sister's face.
"Can you not hear?" she whispered. "Yet you say you love the white
priest. I have heard this long while the noise of sword striking
sword. I listen without fear, knowing that no man can conquer my
husband when no treachery hangs behind. Can you not hear the sounds of
the fight?"
"My ears burn," cried Onawa. "I hear only the cold wind passing among
the pines."
"They fight!" exclaimed her sister triumphantly. "My Richard shall
rest to-day."
"The water," gasped Onawa for the third time. "My throat is on fire."
"Drink and go forth."
Grasping the vessel in both hands, Onawa drained it to the dregs.
Then, as her arms fell, and the taste in her mouth became exceeding
bitter, and a strange exaltation visited her brain, and her body began
to burn, and numbness came into her feet, she bent with one terrible
groan, to hide her fear and her shame, and--if it were possible--her
awful knowledge of the wolfsbane poisoning that draught, from the calm
black eyes which stared at her across the fire.
"Aid whom you will," said the steady voice, which was scarce audible
above the furious beatings of the listener's heart. "The day breaks."
A lifeless winter sun was struggling into the hut.
The pride of her race remained with Onawa to the end. She would not
show fear, nor useless rage, in the presence of her sister. She would
not confess what she knew, nor acknowledge that she had met with the
punishment which she deserved and the laws of their race demanded.
Passing into a sad beam of light, she drew herself erect and panted:
"I shall go forth."
"Go, sister," said the poisoner. "I too go forth, but we shall not
walk together. For you the west and the forest, for me the south and
the sea."
"I go among the pines."
"Farewell, sister."
"Farewell."
Erect and proud, Onawa passed out with her awful sorrow, through the
opening morning, and so among the trees, still dignified and unbending
because she knew those calm black eyes followed all her movements. On
she went into the increasing gloom, until the snow carpet appeared to
grow hot, and opalescent colours fringed the trees, and sounds of
sleepy music hummed around her head. The red and green lights flashed
up and down; solitude closed behind her; the pine-barrens were on fire.
The world was gone.