MOONLIGHT
The wind had died down, although the snow continued to fall thickly the
following morning, as Brent and Snowdrift crept from the wikiup and
struck out for the river. It was heavy going, even the broad webbed
snowshoes sinking deeply into the fluffy white smother that covered the
wind-packed fall of the night. Brent offered to break trail, but
Snowdrift insisted upon taking her turn, and as he labored in her wake,
the man marveled at the strength and the untiring endurance of the
slender, lithe-bodied girl. He marveled also at the unfailing sureness
of her sense of direction. Twice, when he was leading she corrected him
and when after nearly four hours of continuous plodding, they stood upon
the bank of the river, he realized that without her correction, his
course would have carried him miles to the southward.
"Good bye," he smiled, extending his bared hand, when at length they
came to the parting of the ways, "I don't want but one of the caribou I
shot. Divide the other two between the families of the Indians that
skipped out."
Slipping off her mitten, the girl took the proffered hand unhesitatingly
and an ecstatic thrill shot through Brent's heart at the touch of the
firm slender fingers that closed about his own--a thrill that
half-consciously, half-unconsciously, caused him to press the hand that
lay warm within his clasp.
"Yes," she answered, making no effort to release the hand, "They need
the meat. With the rabbits they can snare, it will keep them all winter.
I have not much fur yet--a few fox skins, and some _loup cervier_. I
will bring them to you tomorrow."
"Bring them to me!" cried Brent, "What do you mean? Why should you bring
them to me?"
"Why!" she exclaimed, regarding him curiously, "To pay for the meat, of
course. A caribou is worth a cross fox, and----"
Brent felt the blood mounting to his face. Abruptly, almost roughly he
released the girl's hand. "I did not offer to sell you the meat," he
answered, a trifle stiffly. "They need it, and they're welcome to it."
Snowdrift, too, had been thrilled by that handclasp, and the thrill had
repeated itself at the gentle pressure of the strong fingers, and she
was quick to note the change in the man's manner, and stood uncertainly
regarding her bared hand until a big snowflake settled upon it and
melted into a drop of water. Then she thrust the hand into her big fur
mitten, and as her glance met his, Brent saw that the dark eyes were
deep with concern: "I--I do not understand," she said, softly. "I have
made you angry. I do not want you to be angry with me. Do you mean that
you want to give them the meat? People do not give meat, excepting to
members of their own tribe when they are very poor. But you are not of
the tribe. You are not even an Indian. White men do not give Indians
meat, ever."
Already Brent was cursing himself for his foolish flare of pride. Again
his heart thrilled at the wonder of the girl's absolute
unsophistication. Swiftly his hand sought hers, but this time she did
not remove it from the mitten. "I am not angry with you, Snowdrift!" he
exclaimed, quickly, "I was a fool! It was I who did not understand. But,
I want you to understand that here is one white man who does give meat
to Indians. And I wish I were a member of your tribe. Sometime,
maybe----"
"Oh, no, no! You would not want to be one of us. We are very poor, and
we are Indians. You are a white man. Why should you want to live with
us?"
"Some day I will tell you why," answered the man, in a voice so low that
the dark eyes searched his face wonderingly. "And, now, won't you give
me your hand again? To show me that you are not angry with me."
The girl laughed happily: "Angry with you! Oh, I would never be angry
with you! You are good. You are the only good white man I have known
who was not a priest, or a factor, or a policeman--and even they do not
give the Indians meat." With a swift movement she slipped her hand from
the mitten and once more placed it within his, and this time there was
nothing unconscious in the pressure of Brent's clasp. He fancied that he
felt the slender hand tremble ever so lightly within his own, and
glanced swiftly into the girl's face. For an instant their eyes met, and
then the dark eyes dropped slowly before his gaze, and very gently he
released her hand.
"May I come and see you, soon?" he asked.
"Why, yes, of course! Why did you ask me that?" she inquired,
wonderingly, "You know the way to our camp, and you know that now I know
you are not a hooch trader."
"Why," smiled Brent, "I asked because--why, just because it seemed the
thing to do--a sort of formality, I reckon."
The girl's smile met his own: "I do not understand, I guess.
Formality--what is that? A custom of the land of the white man? But I
have not read of that in books. Here in the North if anybody wants to go
a place, he goes, unless he has been warned to stay away for some
reason, and then if he goes he will get shot. I will shoot the hooch
traders if they come to the camp. The first time I will tell them to
go--and if they come back I will kill them."
"You wouldn't kill them--really?" smiled Brent, amazed at the matter of
fact statement coming from this slip of a girl, whose face rimmed in its
snow-covered parka hood was, he told himself, the most beautiful face he
had ever looked upon. "Didn't they teach you in the mission that it is
wrong to kill?"
"It is wrong to kill in anger, or for revenge for a wrong, or so that
you may steal a man's goods. But it is not wrong to kill one who is
working harm in the world. You, too, know that this is true, because in
the books I have read of many such killings, and in some books it was
openly approved, and other books were so written that the approval was
made plain."
"But, there is the law," ventured Brent.
"Yes, there is the law. But the law is no good up here. By the time the
policemen would get here the hooch trader would be many miles away. And
even if they should catch him, the Indians would not say that he traded
them hooch. They would be afraid. No, it is much better to kill them.
They take all the fur in trade for hooch, and then the women have
nothing to eat, and the little babies die."
Brent nodded, thoughtfully; "I reckon you're right," he agreed, "But, I
wish you would promise me that if any hooch runners show up, you will
let me deal with them."
"Oh, will you?" cried the girl, her eyes shining, "Will you help me? Oh,
with a white man to help me! With _you_--" she paused, and as Brent's
glance met hers, the dark eyes drooped once more, and the man saw that
the cheeks were flushed through their tan.
"Of course I'll help you!" he smiled reassuringly, "I would love to, and
between us we'll make the Coppermine country a mighty unhealthy place
for the hooch runners."
"You will come to see me," reminded the girl, "And I will come to see
you, and we will hunt together, and you will show me how to find gold."
"Yes," promised Brent, "We will see each other often--very often. And we
will hunt together, and I will show you all I know about finding gold.
Good bye, and if you need any help getting the meat into camp, let me
know and Joe Pete and I will come down with the dogs."
"We won't need any help with the meat. There are plenty of us to haul it
in. That is squaw's work, Good bye."
The girl stood motionless and watched Brent until his form was hidden by
a bend of the river. Then, slowly, she turned and struck off up stream.
And as she plodded through the ever deepening snow her thoughts were all
of the man who had come so abruptly--so vitally into her life, and as
she pondered she was conscious of a strange unrest within her, an
awakening longing that she did not understand. Subconsciously she drew
off her heavy mitten and looked at the hand that had lain in his. And
then, she raised it to her face, and drew it slowly across her cheek.
In the cabin, she answered the questions of old Wananebish in
monosyllables, and after a hearty meal, she left the cabin abruptly and
entered another, where she lifted a very tiny red baby from its bed of
blankets and skins, and to the astonishment of the mite's mother, seated
herself beside the little stove, and crooned to it, and cuddled it,
until the short winter day came to a close.
Early the following day Snowdrift piloted a dozen squaws with their
sleds and dog teams to the place of the kill. One of Brent's three
caribou was gone, and the girl's eyes lighted with approval as she saw
that his trail was partially covered with new-fallen snow. "He came back
yesterday--he and his Indian, and they got the meat. He is strong," she
breathed to herself, "Stronger than I, for I was tired from walking in
the loose snow, and I did not come back."
Leaving the squaws to bring in the meat, the girl shouldered her rifle
and struck into the timber, her footsteps carrying her unerringly toward
the patch of scrub in which she and Brent had sought shelter from the
storm. She halted beside the little wikiup, snow-buried, now--even the
hole through which they had crawled was sealed with the new-fallen snow.
For a long time she stood looking down at the little white mound. As she
turned to go, her glance fell upon a trough-like depression, only half
filled with snow. The depression was a snowshoe trail, and it ended just
beyond the little mound.
"It is _his_ trail," she whispered, to a Canada jay that chattered and
jabbered at her from the limb of a dead spruce. "He came here, as I
came, to look at our little wikiup. And he went away and left it just as
it was." Above her head the jay flitted nervously from limb to limb with
his incessant scolding. "Why did he come?" she breathed, "And why did I
come?" And, as she had done upon the river, she drew her hand from her
mitten and passed it slowly across her cheek. Then she turned, and
striking into the half-buried trail, followed it till it merged into
another trail, the trail of a man with a dog-sled, and then she followed
the broader trail to the northwestward.
At nine o'clock that same morning Brent threw the last shovelful of the
eight-inch thawing of gravel from the shallow shaft, and leaving Joe
Pete to build and tend the new fire, he picked up his rifle, and under
pretense of another hunt, struck off up the river in the direction of
the Indian camp.
Joe Pete watched with a puzzled frown until he had disappeared. Then he
carried his wood and lighted the fire in the bottom of the shaft.
An hour and a half later Brent knocked at the door of the cabin from
which Snowdrift had stepped, rifle in hand, upon the occasion of their
first meeting. The door was opened by a wrinkled squaw, who looked
straight into his eyes as she waited for him to speak. There was
unveiled hostility in the stare of those beady black eyes, and it was
with a conscious effort that Brent smiled: "Is Snowdrift in?" he
inquired.
"No," the squaw answered, and as an after-thought, "She has gone with
the women to bring in the meat."
The man was surprised that the woman spoke perfect English. The Indians
who had come to trade, had known only the word "hooch." His smile
broadened, though he noticed that the glare of hostility had not faded
from the eyes: "She told you about our hunt, then? It was great sport.
She is a wonder with a rifle."
"No, she did not tell me." The words came in a cold, impersonal
monotone.
"Can't I come in?" Brent asked the question suddenly. "I must get back
to camp soon. I just came down to see--to see if I could be of any help
in bringing in the meat."
"The women bring in the meat," answered the woman, and Brent felt as
though he had been caught lying. But, she stepped aside and motioned him
to a rude bench beside the stove. Brent removed his cap and glanced
about him, surprised at the extreme cleanliness of the interior, until
he suddenly remembered that this was the home of the girl with the
wondrous dark eyes. Covertly he searched the face of the old squaw,
trying to discover one single feature that would proclaim her to be the
mother of the girl, but try as he would, no slightest resemblance could
he find in any line or lineament of the wrinkled visage.
She had seated herself upon the edge of the bunk beyond the little
stove.
"Can't we be friends?" he asked abruptly.
The laugh that greeted his question sounded in his ears like the snarl
of a wolf: "Yes, if you will let me kill you now--we can be friends."
"Oh, come," laughed Brent, "That's carrying friendship a bit too far,
don't you think?"
"I had rather you had traded hooch to the men," answered the woman,
sullenly, "For then she would even now hate you--as someday she will
learn to hate you!"
"Learn to hate me! What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean!" cried the squaw, her voice quivering with anger,
"You white men are devils! You come, and you stay a while, and then you
go your way, and you stop again, and your trail is a trail of misery--of
misery, and of father-less half-breed babies! I wish she had killed you
that day you stood out there in the snow! Maybe the harm has been
already done----"
"What do you mean?" roared Brent, overturning the bench and towering
above the little stove in his rage. "You can't talk to me like that! Out
with it! What do you mean?"
The squaw, also, was upon her feet, cowering at the side of the bunk, as
she hurled her words into Brent's face. "Where were you last night?
And, where was she?"
Two steps and Brent was before her, his face thrust to within a foot of
her own: "We were together," he answered in a voice that cut cold as
steel, "In a wikiup that we built in the blinding snow and the darkness
to protect us from the storm. Half of the night, while she slept upon
her robe, I sat and tended the fire, and then, because she insisted upon
it, she tended the fire while I slept." As the man spoke never for a
moment did the glittering eyes of the squaw leave his close-thrust,
blazing eyes, and when he finished, she sank to the bunk with an
inarticulate cry. For in the righteous wrath of the blazing eyes she had
read the truth--and in his words was the ring of truth.
"Can it be?" she faltered, "Can it be that there is such a white man?"
The anger melted from Brent's heart as quickly as it had come. He saw
huddled upon the bunk not a poison-tongued, snake-eyed virago, but a
woman whose heart was torn with solicitude for the welfare of her child.
But, was Snowdrift her child? Swiftly the thought flitted into Brent's
brain, and as swiftly flashed another. Her child, or another's--what
matter? One might well question her parentage--but never her love.
Gently his hand went out and came to rest upon the angular shoulder. And
when he spoke the tone of his voice, even more than his words,
reassured the woman. "There are many such white men," he said,
soothingly. "You need not fear. I am your friend, and the friend of
Snowdrift. I, like yourself, am here to find gold, and like yourself, I
too, hate the traders of hooch--and with reason." He stepped to the
stove, upturned the bench and recovered his cap. And as the old woman
rose to her feet, Brent saw that the look of intense hatred had been
supplanted by a look, which if not exactly of friendliness, was at least
one of passive tolerance. At the doorway he paused, hesitated for a
moment, and then, point blank, flashed the question that for days had
been uppermost in his mind: "Who is Snowdrift?"
Wananebish leaned against a stanchion of the bunk. Instinctively, her
savage heart knew that the white man standing before had spoken the
truth. Her eyes closed, and for a moment, in the withered breast raged a
conflict. Then her eyes opened, her lips moved, and she saw that the man
was straining eagerly toward her to catch the words: "Snowdrift is my
daughter," she said.
Brent hesitated. He had been quick to catch the flash of the eye that
had accompanied the words, a flash more of defiance than of anger. It
was upon his tongue to ask who was Murdo MacFarlane, but instead he
bowed: "I must go now. I shall be coming here often. I hope I shall not
be unwelcome."
The look of passive tolerance was once more in her eyes, and she
shrugged so noncommittally that Brent knew that for the present, if he
had not gained an ally, he had at least, eliminated an enemy.
As the man plodded down the river, his thoughts were all of the girl.
The stern implacability of her as she stood in the doorway of the cabin
and ordered him from the encampment. The swift assurance with which she
assumed leadership as the storm roared down upon them. The ingenuous
announcement that they must spend the night--possibly several nights in
the barrens. And the childlike naivete of the words that unveiled her
innermost thoughts. The compelling charm of her, her beauty of face and
form, and the lithe, untiring play of her muscles as she tramped through
the new-fallen snow. Her unerring sense of direction. Her simple code of
morals regarding the killing of men. Her every look, and word and
movement was projected with vivid distinctness upon his brain. And then
his thoughts turned to the little cabin that was her home, and to the
leathern skinned old woman who told him she was the girl's mother.
"The squaw lied!" he uttered fiercely. "Never in God's world is
Snowdrift her daughter! But--who is she?"
He rounded the last bend of the river and brought up shortly. Joe Pete
was stoking the fire with wood, and upon the gravel dump, sat the girl
apparently very much interested in the operation.
Almost at the same instant she saw him, and Brent's heart leaped within
him at the glad little cry that came to him over the snow, as the girl
scrambled to her feet and hurried toward him. "Where have you been?" she
asked. "I came to hunt--and you were gone. So I waited for you to come,
and I watched Joe Pete feed the fire in the hole."
Brent's fingers closed almost caressingly over the slender brown hand
that was thrust into his and he smiled into the upraised eyes: "I, too,
went to hunt. I went to your cabin, and your--mother," despite himself,
the man's tongue hesitated upon the word, "told me that you had gone
with the women to bring in the meat."
"Oh, you have seen Wananebish!" cried the girl, "And she was glad to see
you?"
"Well," smiled Brent, "Perhaps not so awfully glad--right at first. But
Wananebish and I are good friends, now."
"I am glad. I love Wananebish. She is good to me. She has deprived
herself of many things--sometimes I think, even of food, that I might
stay in school at the mission. And now it is too late to hunt today, and
I am hungry. Let us go in the cabin and eat."
"Fine!" cried Brent, "Hey, Joe Pete, cut some caribou steaks, and I'll
build up the fire!" He turned again to the girl, "Come on," he laughed,
"I could eat a raw dog!"
"But, there is plenty of meat!" cried the girl, "And you'll need the
dogs! Only when men are starving will they eat their dogs--and not
_raw_!"
Brent laughed heartily into the dismayed face: "You need not be afraid,
we will save the dogs till we need them. That was only a figure of
speech. I meant that I am very hungry, and that, if I could find nothing
else to eat I should relish even raw dog meat."
Snowdrift was laughing, now: "I see!" she cried, "In books are many such
sayings. It is a metaphor--no, not a metaphor--a--oh, I don't remember,
but anyway I am glad you said that because I thought such things were
used only in the language of books--and maybe I can say one like that
myself, someday."
At the door of the cabin they removed their snowshoes, and a few moments
later a wood fire was roaring in the little stove. Joe Pete came in with
the frozen steaks, set them down upon the table, and moved toward the
door, but Brent called him back. "You're in on this feed! Get busy and
fry up those steaks while I set the table."
The Indian hesitated, glanced shrewdly at Brent as if to ascertain the
sincerity of the invitation, and throwing off his parka, busied himself
at the stove, while Brent and Snowdrift, laughing and chattering like
children, placed the porcelain lined plates and cups and the steel
knives and forks upon the uneven pole table.
The early darkness was gathering when they again left the cabin.
Snowdrift paused to watch Joe Pete throw wood into the flames that
leaped from the mouth of the shallow shaft: "Why do you have the fire
in the hole?" she asked of Brent, who stood at her side.
"Why, to thaw the gravel so we can throw it out onto the dump. Then in
the spring, we'll sluice out the dump and see what we've got."
"Do you mean for gold?" asked the girl in surprise, "We only hunt for
gold in the summer in the sand of the creeks and the rivers."
"This way is better," explained Brent. "In the summer you can only muck
around in the surface stuff. You can't sink a shaft because the water
would run in and fill it up. In most places the deeper you go the richer
the gravel. The very best of it is right down against bed-rock. In the
winter we keep a fire going until the gravel is thawed for six or eight
inches down, then we rake out the ashes and wait for the hole to cool
down so there will be air instead of gas in it, and then we throw out
the loose stuff and build up the fire again."
"And you won't know till spring whether you have any gold or not? Why,
maybe you would put in a whole winter's work and get nothing!"
"Oh, we kind of keep cases on it with the pan. Every day or so I scoop
up a panful and carry it into the cabin and melt some ice and pan it
out."
"And is there gold here? Have you found it?"
"Not yet. That is, not in paying quantities. The gravel shows just
enough color to keep us at it. I don't think it is going to amount to
much. So far we're making fair wages--and that's about all."
"What do you mean by fair wages?" smiled the girl. "You see, I am
learning all I can about finding gold."
"I expect we're throwing out maybe a couple of ounces a day--an ounce
apiece. If it don't show something pretty quick I'm going to try some
other place. There's a likely looking creek runs in above here."
"But an ounce of gold is worth sixteen dollars!" exclaimed the girl,
"And sixteen dollars every day for each of you is lots of money."
Brent laughed: "It's good wages, and that's about all. But I'm not here
just to make wages. I've got to make a strike."
"How much is a strike?"
"Oh, anywhere from a half a million up."
"A half a million dollars!" cried the girl, "Why, what could you do with
it all?"
Brent laughed: "Oh I could manage to find use for it, I reckon. In the
first place I owe a man some money over on the Yukon--two men. They've
got to be paid. And after that--" His voice trailed off into silence.
"And what would you do after that?" persisted the girl.
"Well," answered the man, as he watched the shower of sparks fly upward,
"That depends--But, come, it's getting dark. I'll walk home with you."
"Are you going because you think I am afraid?" she laughed.
"I am going because I want to go," he answered, and led off up the
river.
As the darkness settled the snow-covered surface of the river showed as
a narrow white lane that terminated abruptly at each bend in a wall of
intense blackness. Overhead a million stars glittered so brightly in the
keen air that they seemed suspended just above the serried skyline of
the bordering spruces. At the end of an hour it grew lighter. Through
the openings between the flanking spruce thickets long naked ridges with
their overhanging wind-carved snow-cornices were visible far back from
the river. As they came in sight of the encampment the girl, who was
traveling ahead, paused abruptly and with an exclamation of delight,
pointed toward a distant ridge upon the clean-cut skyline of which the
rim of the full moon showed in an ever widening segment of red. Brent
stood close by her side, and together, in wrapt silence they watched the
glowing orb rise clear of the ridge, watched its color pale until it
hung cold and clean-cut in the night sky like a disk of burnished brass.
"Isn't it beautiful?" she breathed, and by the gentle pressure that
accompanied the words, Brent suddenly knew that her bared hand was in
his own, and that two mittens lay upon the snow at their feet.
"Wonderful," he whispered, as his eyes swept the unending panorama of
lifeless barrens. "It is as if we two were the only living beings in
the whole dead world."
"Oh, I wish--I wish we were!" cried the girl, impulsively. And then: "No
that is wrong! Other people--thousands and thousands of them--men, and
women, and little babies--they all love to live."
"It is wonderful to live," breathed the man, "And to be standing
here--with you--in the moonlight."
"Ah, the moonlight--is it the moonlight that makes me feel so
strange--in here?" she raised her mittened hand and pressed it against
her breast, "So strange and restless. I want to go--I do not know
where--but, I want to do something big--to go some place--any place, but
to go, and go, and go!" Her voice dropped suddenly, and Brent saw that
her eyes were resting broodingly upon the straggling group of tepees and
cabins. A dull square of light glowed sullenly from her own cabin
window, and her voice sounded heavy and dull: "But, there is no place to
go, and nothing to do, but hunt, and trap, and look for gold. Sometimes
I wish I were dead. No I do not mean that--but, I wish I had never
lived."
"Nonsense, girl! You love to live! Beautiful, strong, young--why, life
is only just starting for--you." Brent had almost said "us."
"But, of what use is it all? Why should one love to live? I am an
Indian--yet I hate the Indians--except Wananebish. We fight the hooch
traders, yet the men get the hooch. It is no use. I learned to love
books at the mission--and there are no books. You are here--with you I
am happy. But, if you do not find a strike, you will go away. Or, if we
do not find gold, we will go. The Indians will return to the river and
become hangers-on at the posts. It is all--no use!"
Brent's arms were about her, her yielding body close against his, and
she was sobbing against the breast of his parka. The man's brain was a
chaos. In vain he strove to control the trembling of his muscles as he
crushed her to him. In an unsteady voice he was murmuring words: "There,
there, dear. I am never going away from you--never." Two arms stole
about his neck, and Brent's heart pounded wildly as he felt them tighten
in a convulsive embrace. He bent down and their lips met in a long,
lingering kiss, "Darling," he whispered, with his lips close to her ear,
"You are mine--mine! And I am yours. And we will live--live! Tell me
Snowdrift--sweetheart--do you love me?"
"I love you!" her lips faltered the simple words, and Brent saw that the
dark eyes that looked up into his own glowed in the moonlight like black
pools. "Now--I know--it was--not the moonlight--in here--it was love!"
"Yes, darling, it was love. I have loved you since the first moment I
saw you."
"And I have loved you--always!"