JACK THORNTON
There was music that night in Le Pas. Jan heard it before he came to
the first of the scattered lights, and the dogs pricked up their ears.
Kazan, the one-eyed, whined under his breath, and the weight at Jan's
heart grew heavier as the dog turned up his head to him in the
starlight. It was strange music, nothing like Jan had ever heard. It
was strange to Kazan, and set him whining, and he thrust his muzzle up
to his master's touch inquiringly. They passed on like shadows, close
to a big, lighted log building from which the music came, and with it a
tumult of laughter, of shuffling and stamping feet, of coarse singing
and loud voices. A door opened and a man and a woman came out. The man
was cursing, and the woman was laughing at him--laughing as Jan had
never heard a woman laugh before, and he held his breath as he listened
to the taunting mockery in it. Others followed the first man and the
first woman. Some passed quietly. A woman, escorted between two men,
screamed with merriment as she flung toward his shadowy figure an
object which fell with a crash against the sledge. It was a bottle.
Kazan snarled. The trace-dogs slunk close to the leader's heels. With a
low word Jan led them on.
Close down to the river, where the Saskatchewan swung in a half-moon to
the south and west, he found a low, squat building with a light hung
over the door illuminating a bit of humor in the form of a printed
legend which said that it was "King Edward's Hotel." The scrub bush of
the forest grew within a hundred yards of it, and in this bush Jan tied
his dogs and left his sledge. It did not occur to him that now, when he
had entered civilization, he had come also into the land of lock and
bolt, of robbers and thieves. It was loneliness, and not suspicion,
that sent him back to unleash Kazan and take him with him.
They entered the hotel, Kazan with suspicious caution. The door opened
into a big room lighted by an oil lamp, turned low. The room was empty
except for a solitary figure sitting in a chair, facing a wide window
which looked into the north. Making no sound, that he might not disturb
this other occupant, Jan also seated himself before the window. Kazan
laid his wolfish head across his master's knees, his one eye upon him
steadily and questioningly. Never in all his years of life had Jan felt
the depth of loneliness that swept upon him now, as he looked into the
North. Below him the Saskatchewan lay white and silent; beyond it he
could see the dark edge of the forest, and far, far, beyond that,
hovering low in the sky, the polar star. It burned faintly now, almost
like a thousand other stars that he saw, and the aurora was only a
fading glow.
Something rose up in Jan's throat and choked him, and he closed his
eyes, with his fingers clutching Kazan's head. In spite of the battle
that he had fought, his mind swept back--back through the endless
silent spaces, over mountains and through forests, swift, resistless,
until once more the polar star flashed in all its glory over his head,
and he was at Lac Bain. He did not know that he was surrendering to
hunger, exhaustion, the cumulative effects of his thirteen days' fight
in the forests. He was with Mélisse again, with the old violin, with
the things that they had loved. He forgot in these moments that there
was another in the room; he heard no sound as the man shifted his
position so that he looked steadily at him and Kazan. It was the low,
heart-broken sob of grief that fell from his own lips that awakened him
again to a consciousness of the present.
He jerked himself erect, and found Kazan with his fangs gleaming. The
stranger had risen. He was standing close to him, leaning down, staring
at him in the dim lamplight, and as Jan lifted his own eyes he knew
that in the pale, eager face of the man above him there was written a
grief which might have been a reflection of his own. For a full breath
or two they looked, neither speaking, and the hair along Kazan's spine
stood stiff. Something reached out to Jan and set his tired blood
tingling. He knew that this man was not a forest man. He was not of his
people. His face bore the stamp of the people to the south, of
civilization. And yet something passed between them, leaped all
barriers, and made them friends before they had spoken. The stranger
reached down his hand, and Jan reached up his. All of the loneliness,
the clinging to hope, the starving desire of two men for companionship,
passed in the long grip of their hands.
"You have just come down," said the man, half questioningly. "That was
your sledge--out there?"
"Yes," said Jan.
The stranger sat down in the chair next to Jan.
"From the camps?" he questioned eagerly.
"What camps, m'sieur?"
"The railroad camps, where they are putting the new line through,
beyond Wekusko."
"I know of no camps," said Jan simply. "I know of no railroad, except
this that comes to Le Pas. I come from Lac Bain, on the edge of the
barren lands."
"You have never been down before?" asked the stranger softly. Jan
wondered at the light in his eyes.
"A long time ago," he said, "for a day. I have passed all of my
life--up there." Jan pointed to the north, and the other's eyes turned
to where the polar star was fading low in the sky.
"And I have passed all of my life DOWN THERE," he replied, nodding his
head to the south. "A year ago I came up here for--for health and
happiness," he laughed nervously. "I found them both. But I'm leaving
them. I'm going back to-morrow. My name is Thornton," he added, holding
out his hand again. "I come from Chicago."
"My name is Thoreau--Jan Thoreau," said Jan. "I have read of Chicago in
a book, and have seen pictures of it. Is it larger than the city that
is called Winnipeg?"
He looked at Thornton, and Thornton turned his head a little so that
the light did not shine in his face. The grip of his fingers tightened
about Jan's hand.
"Yes, it is larger."
"The officers of the great company are at Winnipeg, and Le
Commissionaire, are they not, m'sieur?"
"Of the Hudson's Bay Company--yes."
"And if there was business to do--important business, m'sieur, would it
not be best to go to Le Commissionaire?" questioned Jan.
Thornton looked hard at the tense eagerness in Jan's face.
"There are nearer headquarters, at Prince Albert," he said.
"That is not far," exclaimed Jan, rising. "And they would do business
there--important business?" He dropped his hand to Kazan's head, and
half turned toward the door.
"Perhaps better than the Commissioner," replied Thornton. "It might
depend--on what your business is."
To them, as each stood for a moment in silence, there came the low
wailing of a dog out in the night.
"They are calling for Kazan," said Jan quietly, as though he had not
read the question in Thornton's last words. "Good night, m'sieur!"
The dogs were sitting upon their haunches, waiting, when Jan and Kazan
went back to them. Jan drew them farther back, where the thick spruce
shut them out from the clearing, and built a fire. Over this he hung
his coffee-pail and a big chunk of frozen caribou meat, and tossed
frozen fish to the hungry dogs. Then he pulled down spruce boughs and
spread his heavy blankets out near the fire, and waited for the coffee
and meat to cook. The huskies were through when he began eating, and
they lay on their bellies, close about his feet, ready to snap at the
scraps which he threw them. Jan noticed, as he ate, that there was left
in them none of the old, fierce, fighting spirit. They did not snap or
snarl. There was no quarreling when he threw bits of meat to them, and
he found himself wondering if they, too, were filled with the sickness
which was eating at his own heart.
With this sickness, this deathly feeling of loneliness and heartache,
there had entered into Jan now a strange sensation that was almost
excitement--an eagerness to fasten the dogs in their traces, to hurry
on, in spite of his exhaustion, to that place which Thornton had told
him of--Prince Albert, and to free himself there, for all time, of the
thing which had oppressed him since that night many years ago, when he
had staggered into Lac Bain to play his violin as Cummins' wife died.
He reached inside his skin coat and there he felt papers which he had
taken from the hole in the lob-stick tree. They were safe. For twenty
years he had guarded them. To-morrow he would take them to the great
company at Prince Albert. And after that--after he had done this thing,
what would there remain in life for Jan Thoreau? Perhaps the company
might take him, and he would remain in civilization. That would be
best--for him. He would fight against the call of his forests as years
and years ago he had fought against that call of the Other World that
had filled him with unrest for a time. He had killed THAT. If he DID
return to his forests, he would go far to the west, or far to the east.
No one that had ever known him would hear again of Jan Thoreau.
Kazan had crept to his blanket, daring to encroach upon it inch by
inch, until his great wolf-head lay upon Jan's arm. It was ten years
ago that Jan had taken Kazan, a little half-blind puppy that he and
Mélisse had chosen from a litter of half a dozen stronger brothers and
sisters. Kazan was all that was left to him now. He loved the other
dogs, but they were not like Kazan. He tightened his arm about the
dog's head. Exhaustion, and the warmth of the fire, made him drowsy,
and, after a time, he slept, with his head thrown back against the tree.
Something awoke him, hours afterward. He opened his eyes, and found
that the fire was still burning brightly. On the far side of it, beyond
the dogs, sat Thornton. A look at the sky, where the stars were dying,
and Jan knew that it was just before the gray break of dawn. He sat
upright. Thornton laughed softly at him, and puffed out clouds of smoke
from his pipe.
"You were freezing," he said, as Jan stared, "and sleeping like a dead
man. I waited for you back there, and then hunted you up. You know--I
thought--" He hesitated, and knocked the ash from his pipe bowl. Then
he looked frankly and squarely at Jan. "See here, old man, if you're
hard up--had trouble of any sort--bad luck--got no money--won't you let
me help you out?"
"Thank you, m'sieur--I have money," said Jan. "I prefer to sleep
outside with the dogs. Mon Dieu, I guess I would have been stiff with
the frost if you had not come. You have been here--all night?"
Thornton nodded.
"And it is morning," exclaimed Jan, rising and looking above the spruce
tops. "You are kind, m'sieur. I wish I might do as much for you."
"You can," said Thornton quietly. "Where are you going--from here?"
"To the company's offices at Prince Albert. We will start within an
hour."
"Will you take me with you?" Thornton asked.
"With pleasure!" cried Jan. "But it will be a hard journey, m'sieur. I
must hurry, and you may not be accustomed to running behind the dogs."
Thornton rose and stretched out a hand.
"It can't be too hard for me," he said. "I wish--"
He stopped, and something in his low voice made Jan look straight into
his eyes. For a moment they gazed at each other in silence, and again
Jan saw in Thornton's face the look of loneliness and grief which he
had first seen in the half gloom of the hotel. It was the suppressed
note in Thornton's voice, of despair almost, that struck him deepest,
and made him hold the other's hand a moment longer. Then he turned to
his pack upon the sledge.
"I've got meat and coffee and hard biscuits," he said. "Will you have
breakfast with me?"
That day Jan and Thornton made fifty miles westward over the level
surface of the Saskeram, and camped again on the Saskatchewan. The
second day they followed the river, passed the Sipanock, and struck
south and west over the snow-covered ice for Prince Albert. It was
early afternoon of the fourth day when at last they came to the town.
"We will go to the offices of the great company," said Jan. "We will
lose no time."
It was Thornton now who guided him to the century-old building at the
west edge of the town. It was Thornton who led him into an office
filled mostly with young women, who were laboring at clicking machines;
and it was Thornton who presented a square bit of white card to a
gray-haired man at a desk, who, after reading it, rose from his chair,
bowed, and shook hands with him. And a few moments later a door opened,
and Jan Thoreau, alone, passed through it, his heart quivering, his
breath choking him, his hand clutching at the papers in his breast
pocket.
Outside Thornton waited. An hour passed and still the door did not
reopen. The man at the desk glanced curiously at Thornton. Two girls at
typewriters exchanged whispered opinions as to who might be this
wild-looking creature from the north who was taking up an hour of the
sub-commissioner's time. Nearly two hours passed before Jan appeared.
Thornton, still patient, rose as the door opened. His eyes first
encountered the staring face of the sub-commissioner. Then Jan came
out. He had aged five years in two hours. There was a tired stoop to
his shoulders, a strange pallor in his cheeks. To Thornton his thin
face seemed to have grown thinner. With bowed head, looking nowhere but
ahead of him, Jan passed on, and as the last door opened to let them
out into the pale winter sun, Thornton heard the muffled sobbing of his
breath. His fingers gripped Jan's arm, his eyes were blazing.
"If you're getting the wrong end of anything up there," he cried
fiercely; "if you're in trouble, and they're taking the blood out of
you--tell me and I'll put the clamps on 'em, so 'elp me God! They'll
buck the devil when they buck Jack Thornton, and if it needs money to
show 'em so, I've got half a million to teach 'em the game!"
"Thanks, m'sieur," struggled Jan, striving to keep a lump out of his
throat. "It's nothing like that. I don't need money. Half a million
would just about buy--what I've given away up there."
He clutched his hand for an instant to the empty pocket where the
papers had been.