Stefan Runs
Philippe Papineau rode nearly all the way on the toboggan, sparing the
dogs only in the hardest places on rising ground. The animals had been
well-fed on the previous night and the trip around the trapping line
had not been a hard one. It represented but a mere fifty miles or so,
over which they had only hauled one man's food in three days, with his
blankets and a small shelter-tent he used when forced to stop away
from one of the small huts he had built on the line. In fact, there
had been little need of three dogs, but Papineau had taken them
because it kept up their training. In the pink of condition,
therefore, the team bade fair to equal Stefan's best performances.
The Frenchman was within sight of the smokestack rising from
Carcajou's sawmill when he opened his eyes, widely. A pair of horses
was coming along the old road, drawing a big sled. As the old lumber
trail was used only by dog-teams, as a rule, this surprised him. A
moment later he clucked at his dogs, which drew to one side, and the
horses, from whose shaggy bodies a cloud of steam was rising, came
abreast of him. The sled stopped.
"Hello there, Papineau!" called one of the men. "Going in for
provisions? Thought you hauled in a barrel of flour last week."
"Uh huh," assented Philippe, non-committally.
"Is that fellow Ennis over to his shack?" asked McIntosh, the
squaw-man.
"Uh huh," repeated the settler.
"D'ye happen to know whether there's a--a young 'ooman there too?"
"Vat you vant wid dat gal?" asked Papineau this time.
"We're just goin' visitin', like," Pat Kilrea informed him. "It's sure
a fine day for a ride in the country. And so that there young 'ooman's
been up there a matter o' three-four days, ain't she?"
"I tink so," assented Philippe.
"D'ye know who she is?" asked Mrs. Kilrea, a severe looking and
angular woman.
"Sure, heem gal is friend o' Hugo," answered the Frenchman, simply.
"Mebbe you better no go to-day. Hugo heem seek. I got to 'urry, so
good-by."
He lashed his dogs on again, while Pat cracked his whip and the party
went on. Mrs. Kilrea was looking rather horrified, thought Sophy
McGurn. Her turn was coming at last. There would be a scene that would
repay her for her trouble, she gleefully decided.
As they went on at a steady pace, over a road which none but horses
inured to lumbering could have followed without breaking a leg or
getting hopelessly stalled in deep snow, Philippe hurried over to the
station and got Joe Follansbee to send a telegram. The young man would
have given a good deal to have made one of the party but his official
duties detained him.
"Who wants a doctor?" he asked, curiously.
"Hugo," answered Papineau, impatiently. "You don't h'ask so moch
question, you fellar. Jus' telegraph quick now an' h'ask for answer
ven dat _docteur_ he come, you 'ear me?"
Joe looked at the Frenchman, intending to resent his sharp orders, but
thought better of it. The small, square-built, wide-shouldered man was
not one to be trifled with. He was known as a calm, cool sort of a
chap with little sense of humor, and the youth reflected that, in this
neck of the woods, it was best not to trifle with men who were apt to
end a quarrel by fighting over an acre of ground and mauling one
another until one or both parties were utterly unrecognizable, even to
their best friends.
"Come back in about an hour and I expect I'll have an answer," he told
the Frenchman, quite meekly.
The latter went into McGurn's store and purchased some tobacco and a
few needed groceries. Suddenly he bethought himself of Stefan.
"_Mon Dieu!_" he exclaimed. "Heem ought know right avay, sure."
He drove his team around to Stefan's smithy but failed to find him. At
the house Mrs. Olsen told him that her husband had gone out a half an
hour ago. He would probably be at Olaf Jonson's, at the other end of
the village. Thither drove Philippe and found his man.
"'Ello, Stefan, want for see you right avay," said the trapper. "Come
'long!"
The Swede hastened to him.
"Vat it iss, Philippe?" he asked, eyeing the dogs expertly. "Py de
looks off tem togs I tink you ban in some hurry, no?"
"Uh huh! I come to telegraph for de _docteur_. Hugo heem 'urted
h'awful bad. Look lak' heem die, mebbe."
Stefan bellowed out an oath and began running towards his house at a
tremendous gait. Papineau jumped on his toboggan and followed, only
catching up after they had gone a couple of hundred yards. When they
reached Olsen's, the latter went in, shouted out the news and came out
again. With the help of Papineau he hitched up his own great team of
five.
"Tank you for lettin' me know, Papineau," he said. "I get ofer dere so
tam qvick you don't belief, I tank. So long!"
"'Old 'ard! 'Old 'ard!" shouted the Frenchman. "Vat for you tink Pat
Kilrea an' McIntosh, an' Prouty an' Kerrigan and more, an' also vomans
is goin' up dere to de Falls? Dey say go visitin'. Dey don't nevaire
go make visits before dat vay. An' dey h'ask me all 'bout de
_demoiselle_, de gal vat is up dere, an' I see Mis' Kilrea an'
Kerrigan's voman look one de oder in de face. Look mean lak' de devil,
dem vomans! I dunno, but I tink dey up to no good, dem crowd. If I no
have to stay for _docteur_ I go right back qvick. D'ye tink dey vant
ter bodder Hugo, or de lady, Stefan?"
The latter swore again.
"If dey bodder 'em I tvists all dere necks like chickens, I tank," he
cried, excitedly. "How long ago did they leave?"
"Vell, most a h'our, now, I tink, and dem's Kerrigan's horses, as is
five year olds an' stronk lak' de devil. Dey run good on de five-mile
flat, dey do, sure, an' odder places vhere snow is pack nice."
This time Stefan didn't answer. He shouted at his team, that started
on the run, but Zeb Foraker's St. Bernard, who could lick any dog in
Carcajou singly, chanced to leap over the garden fence and come at
them. In a moment a half dozen dogs were piled up in a fight. Stefan
stepped into the snarl. A moment later he had the biggest animal, that
was supposed to weigh close to two hundred, by the tail. With a
wonderful heave he lifted it up and swung it over his master's fence
into a leafless copper beach that graced the plot, whence the animal
fell to the ground, looking dazed. It took several minutes to
straighten out the tangled traces and the leader was hopelessly lame.
He had to be taken out and left at home. All the time Stefan's
language brought scared faces to the windows of neighboring shacks. It
was a good thing, probably, that few people in Carcajou understood
Swedish. Still, from the sound of it they judged that it must be
something pretty bad. Finally he was off again, lacking the smartest
animal in his team. The others, however, probably considered that this
was no occasion for further bad behavior and old Jennie, mother of
three of the bunch, led it without making any serious mistakes.
For the life of him Stefan couldn't conceive why anyone should
want to bother Hugo or the pretty lady. It was the very strangeness
and mystery of the thing that aroused him. He never entertained the
idea that Papineau was mistaken. The Frenchman was a fine smart
fellow, one who loved Hugo, and a man not given to idle notions or to
exaggeration. If he thought there was something wrong this must be
the case.
On a long upgrade he ran at the side of his dogs, his great chest
heaving at the tremendous effort. On the level he rode, urging the
animals on and keeping his eyes on the tracks of the horses and
sleigh, while his strong stern face seemed immovably frozen into an
expression of grim determination. Anyone who touched his friend Hugo
would have to reckon with him, indeed. The man was one of the few
beings he cared for, like his wife or the young ones. Such a
friendship was a possession, something he owned, a treasure he would
not be robbed of and was prepared to defend, as he would have defended
his little hoard of money, the home he had built, with the berserker
fury of his ancestors. He was conscious of his might, conscious that
there were few men on earth who could stand up against him in the
rough and tumble fighting current in the far wilderness. He knew that
he could go through such a crowd as was threatening his friend like a
devastating cyclone through a cornfield.
"If dey's qviet un' reasonable I don't 'urt nobotty but yoost tell 'em
git out of here, tarn qvick," he projected. "But if dem mens is up to
anything rough I hope dey says dere prayers alretty, because I yoost
bust 'em all up, you bet."
The team was pulling hard, the breaths coming out in swift little
puffs from their nostrils. Sometimes they walked, with tongues hanging
out, while again they trotted easily, or, down the hills, galloped
with the long easy lope of their wolfish ancestors. And Stefan
calculated the speed the horses could have made here, and again over
there. By the tracks he saw where they had trotted along good ground,
or toiled more slowly over rough places. The man grinned when he came
to spots where they must have proceeded very slowly with the heavy
sleigh, and his brows corrugated when he saw that they had speeded up
again.
"Dey drive tern horses fast," he reflected. "Dey don't vant trafel dis
road back in dark, sure ting, to break dere necks. Dey vant make qvick
vork. But I ban goin' some, too, you bet."
He was taking man's eternal pleasure in swift motion, yet the anxiety
remained with him that he might not catch up with them before they
arrived. He knew that nothing could take place if he were there a
minute before them. But if he was a minute late, what then? When this
idea recurred, his face would take on its grim expression, the look
wherewith Vikings once struck terror among their enemies. He hoped for
the sake of that crowd that he might not be late, as well as for the
good of his friend, for he would crush them, the men at any rate, and
send the women trudging home, wishing they had never been born.
In him the two individualities that make up nearly every human being
swung and seesawed. The kind-hearted, helpful, considerate man kept on
surging upward, in the trust that his arrival would avert all trouble.
Then this phase of his being would pass off and the great primal
creature would take its place and come uppermost, with lustful ideas
of vengeance, visions in which everything was tinged with red, and
then his great voice would ring out in the still woods and the dogs
would pull desperately, with never a pause, and the toboggan would
slither and slide and groan, and the crunching snow seemed to
complain, and the masses of snow suspended to great hemlocks and firs
dropped down suddenly, with thuds that were like the echoes of great
smiting clubs.
When again he ran beside the dogs, in a long pull uphill, the sense of
personal effort comforted him. He was doing something. Once the toe of
one of his snowshoes caught in the snaky root of a big spruce and he
fell ponderously, without a word, and picked himself up again. Dimly
he was conscious that it had injured him a little, but he scarcely
felt it. It was like some hurt received in the heat and passion of
battle, that a man never really feels till the excitement has passed.
His team had kept on, galloping fast, but he never called to them,
knowing that harder ground would presently slow them. And he ran on,
his great limbs appearing to possess the strength of machinery wrought
of steel and iron, while his enormous chest hoarsely drew in and cast
forth great clouds. But he was not working beyond his power, merely
getting the best he knew out of the thews that made him more efficient
than most men, when it came to the toil of the wilds. He knew better
than to play himself out so that he would arrive exhausted and unable
to contend with the whole of his might. He was conscious as he ran
that he would arrive nearly unbreathed and ready for any fray. And
after he had swept off the intruders he would look upon the face of
his friend, the man who for months had shared food with him, and the
scented bedding of the woods, and the toil, and the downpours, and the
clouds of black flies and mosquitoes, and who had always smiled
through fair days and foul, and who, at the risk of his life, had
saved him.
And that friendship was so strong that it must help the sick man. How
could one be ill with a friend near by who had so much strength to
give away, such determination to make all things well, such fierce
power to contend with all inimical things? He would take him in his
arms and bid him be of good cheer and courage, and the man would
respond, would smile, would feel that strength being added to his own,
so that he would soon be well again.
All this might be deepest folly, and was not formulated as we have
been compelled to put it down in these pages. Rather it was but a
simple trust, a faith based on love and hope, a belief originating in
the mind of one of a nature so trusting and inclined to goodness that
until the last moment he would never believe in the victory of powers
of evil.
So Stefan caught up with his dogs again and stepped on the toboggan,
without stopping them, and the great trunks of forest giants seemed to
slip by him swiftly, while here and there, by dint of some formation
of hillside or gorge, his ears grew conscious of the far-away roar of
the great falls. From a little summit he saw the cloud of rising
vapor, all of a mile away. At every turn he peered ahead, keenly
disappointed on each occasion, for the party was not in sight. So he
urged the dogs faster. The big sleigh must surely be just ahead,
beyond the next turn.
"Oh, if dey touch one hair of de head of Hugo, den God pity dem!" he
cried out.
And the dogs ran on, more swiftly than ever, breathing easily still in
spite of the nearly three hundred pounds of manhood they drew, and the
roar of the falls became more distinct, while to the right, away down
below, the river swirled under the groaning ice and sped past wildly,
towards the east and the south, as if seeking to save itself from the
embrace of the North.