THE FIRST STREAK OF DAWN
Fort Mowbray was enveloped in a black cloud of tragedy. Its simple
life flickered on. But it seemed to have been robbed of all its past
reality, all its quiet strength, all that made it worth while.
Nor was the change confined to the white people. Even the Indians,
those stoic creatures born to the worst buffets life knows how to
inflict, whose whole object at the Mission was white man's bounty, to
be paid for by the worship of the white man's God, yielded to the
atmosphere of hopelessness prevailing. Alec had been the young white
chief after the great hunter who had paid his debt at the hands of the
Bell River terror. He, too, was gone, and they felt that they were in
the hands of the "smiling one" for whom their regard was chiefly
inspired by fear. The little white Father was their remaining hope,
and he was very, very old.
So they set up their lamentations, surrounding them with all the rites
of their race. The old women crooned their mystic tuneless dirges.
The younger "charmed" the evil spirits haunting their path. The men
sat in long and profound council which was beset with doubt of the
future.
Ailsa Mowbray and Jessie fought out their own battle, as once before
they had had to fight, and herein their native fortitude strove on
their behalf. For days they saw no one but the little priest who
remained ever at their call. The primitive in their lives demanded for
them that none should witness their hurt. They asked neither sympathy
nor pity, wherein shone forth the mother's wondrous courage which had
supported her through every trial.
The days passed without the departure of Kars and Bill. The excuse was
the state of the river, by which they were to make the headwaters. The
ice was still flowing northward, but in ever lessening bulk, and the
time was filled in with repairs to the canoes which had suffered during
the long portage of the trail.
This was the excuse, but it was only excuse. Both men knew it, and
neither admitted it verbally. The condition of the river would not
have delayed John Kars in the ordinary way. There was always the
portage.
The truth lay in the passionate yearning of the heart of a man who had
remained so long beyond the influence of a woman upon his life. He had
set his task firmly before him, but its fulfilment now must wait till
he had made sure for himself of those things which had suddenly become
the whole aim and desire of his future. He could not leave the Fort
for the adventure of Bell River till he had put beyond all doubt the
hopes he had built on the love that had become the whole meaning of
earthly happiness to him. Bill understood this. So he refrained from
urging, and checked the impatient grumbling of Peigan Charley without
much regard for the scout's feelings.
Murray McTavish continued at his post, undemonstrative, without a sign.
The stream of spring traffic, which consisted chiefly of outfitting on
credit the less provident trappers and pelt-hunters for their summer
campaign, went on without interruption. His projected journey had been
definitely abandoned. But for all his outward manner he was less at
his ease than would have seemed. His eyes were upon Kars at all times.
His delayed departure irritated him. Perhaps he, too, like Bill
Brudenell, understood something of its meaning.
Although his outward seeming had undergone no change, there was a
subtle difference in Murray. His trade methods had hardened. The
trappers who appealed to him in their need left him with a knowledge
that their efforts must be increased if they were to pay off their
credits, and keep up their profits for the next winter's supplies.
Then, too, he avoided Kars, who was sharing the Padre's hospitality,
and even abandoned his nightly visits to the priest, which had been his
habit of years. It was as rarely as possible that he came down to the
Mission, and the clearing only saw him when the demand of nature made
his food imperative.
It was one day, just after his midday dinner, that Murray encountered
Father José. He was leaving Ailsa Mowbray's house, and the old priest
protested at his desertion. The trader's answer was ready on the
moment.
"I hate it, Padre," he said, with unnecessary force. "But I can't act
diff'rent. I got to get around for food or starve. This place
wouldn't see me in months else. You see, I had too much to do with
that boy going down to Leaping Horse. And it's broke me up so bad I
can't face it yet--even to myself. Guess Mrs. Mowbray understands
that, too. Say, she's a pretty great woman. If she weren't I'd be
scared for our proposition here. She must get time. They both must,
and the less they see of me, why, it's all to the good. Time'll do
most things for women--for us all, I guess. Then, maybe things'll
settle down--later."
And the priest's reply was characteristic. It was the reply of a man
who has endured life in the land north of "sixty" for the sheer love of
the dark souls it is his desire to help.
"Yes," he said, with a sigh. "Time can heal almost anything. But it
can't hide the scars. That's the work that falls to the grave."
Murray remained silent while the priest helped himself to snuff. The
little man's eyes became tenderly reflective as he went on.
"Sixty years I've been looking around at things. And my conceit made
me hope to read something of the meaning that lies behind the things
Providence hands out." He shook his white head. "It's just conceit.
I'm not beyond the title page. Maybe the text inside isn't meant for
me. For any of us. It just bewilders. These folk. I've known them
right through from the start. I can see Allan now fixing that old Fort
into order, that old Fort with all its old-time wickedness behind it.
I've watched him, and his wife, and his kiddies, as only a lonely man
in this country can study the folk about him. Wholesome, clean,
God-fearing. That was Allan and his folk in my notion. They fought
their battle with clean hands, and--merciful. It mostly seemed to me
God, was in their hearts all the time. They endured and fought, and it
wasn't always easy. Now?" His eyes were gazing thoughtfully at the
home which had witnessed so much happiness and so much sorrow. "Why,
now God's hand has fallen heavy--heavy. It seems Providence means to
drive them from the Garden. The flaming sword is before their eyes.
It has fallen on them, and they must go. The reason?"
Again came that meditative head-shake. "It's God's will. So be it."
Murray drew a deep breath. He was less impressed by the priestly view
than with the implication.
"Driving them out?" he questioned, his curious eyes searching the wise
old face.
"It seems that way. Mrs. Mowbray won't pass another winter here. It's
not good to pitch camp on the grave of your happiness."
"No."
Murray stood looking after the little man, whom nothing stayed in his
mission of mercy. He watched him vanish within the woods, in the
direction of the Indian encampment.
So two weeks, two long weeks passed, and each day bore its own signs of
the last efforts of winter in its reluctant retreat. And spring, in
its turn, was invincible, and it marched on steadily, breathing its
fresh, invigorating warmth upon an earth it was seeking to make
fruitful.
The cloud of disaster slowly began to lift. Nothing stands still.
Nothing can stand still. The power of life moves on inexorably. It
brings with it its disasters and its joys, but they are all passing
emotions, and are of so small account in the tremendous scheme being
slowly worked out by an Infinite Power.
The blow which had fallen on Jessie Mowbray had robbed her for the
moment of all joy in the coming of John Kars. But her love was deep
and real, and, for all her sorrow, she had neither power nor desire to
deny it. In her darkest moments there was a measure of comfort in it.
It was something on which she could lean for support. Even in her
greatest depths of suffering it buoyed her, all unknown, perhaps, but
nevertheless.
So, as the days passed, and the booming of the glacier thundered under
the warming spring sunlight, she yearned more and more for the gentle
sympathy which she knew he would readily yield. Thus it came that Kars
one day beheld her on the landing, gazing at the work which was going
on under his watchful eye.
It was the revelation he had awaited. That night he conferred with
Bill, with the resulting decision of a start to be made within two days.
The wonder of it. God's world. A world of life and hope. The winter
of Nature's despair driven forth beyond the borders to the outland
drear of eternal northern ice. The blue of a radiant sky, flecked with
a fleece, white as driven snow, frothing waves tossed on the bosom of a
crisp spring breeze. The sun playing a delicious hide-and-seek, at
moments flashing its brilliant eye, and setting the channels of life
pulsating with hope, and again lost behind its screen of alabaster,
that only succeeded in adding to its promise.
As yet the skeleton arms of the winter woods remained unclad. But wild
duck and geese were on the wing, sweeping up from the south in search
of the melting sloughs and flooded hollows, pastures laid open to them
by the rapid thaw. The birth of the new season was accomplished, and
the labor of mother earth was a memory.
They were at the bank of the river again. They were in the heart of
the willow glade, still shorn of its summer beauty. The man was
standing, large, dominating before her, but obsessed by every unmanly
fear. The girl was sitting on a fallen tree-trunk, whose screen of
tilted roots set up a barrier which shut her from the view of the
frowning glances of the aged Fort above them, and whose winter-starved
branches formed a breakwater in the ice cold flood of the stream.
Jessie's pretty eyes were gazing up into the man's face. A quick look
of alarm had replaced, for the moment, the shadow of grief which had so
recently settled in them. Her plain cloth skirt had only utility to
recommend it. Her shirt-waist was serviceable in seasons as uncertain
as the present. The loose buckskin coat, which reached to her knees,
and had been fashioned and beaded by the Mission squaws, had
picturesqueness. But she gained nothing from these things as a setting
for her beauty.
But for Kars, at least, her beauty was undeniable. Her soft crown of
chestnut hair, hatless, at the mercy of the mood of the breeze, to him
seemed like a ruddy halo crowning a face of a childlike purity. Her
gentle gray eyes were to him unfathomable wells of innocence, while her
lips had all the ripeness of a delicious womanhood.
"You were scared that day we pulled into the Fort," he had said, in his
abrupt way.
He had been talking of his going on the morrow. And the change of
subject had come something startlingly to the girl.
"Yes," she admitted, almost before she was aware of it.
"That's how I guessed," he said. "I reached the office on the dead
jump--after I saw. Why? Murray had you scared. How?"
There was no escape from the man's searching gaze. Jessie felt he was
probing irresistibly secrets she vainly sought to keep hidden.
Subterfuge was useless under that regard.
"Murray asked me to marry him. He--asked me just then. I--wish he
hadn't."
"Why?" The inexorable pressure was maintained.
Jessie tried to avoid his eyes. She sought the aid of the bubbling
waters, racing and churning amongst the branches of the fallen tree.
She would have resented such catechism even in her mother. But she was
powerless to deny this man.
"Why?" she echoed at last. Suddenly she raised her eyes to his again.
They were frankly yielding. "Guess I'd rather have Murray guiding a
commercial proposition than hand me out the schedule of life."
"You don't like him, and you're scared of him. I wonder why."
The girl sat up. She flung back her head, and her outspread hands
supported her, resting on the tree-trunk on either side of her.
"Say, why do you talk that way?" she protested. "Is it always your way
to drive folks? I thought that was just Murray's way. Not yours. But
you're right, anyway. I'm scared of Murray when he talks love. I'm
scared, and don't believe. I'd as lief have his hate as his love.
And--and I haven't a thing against him."
There was a sort of desperation in the girl's whole manner of telling
of her fears. It hurt the man as he listened. But his pressure was
not idle. He was seeking corroboration of those doubts which haunted
him. Doubts which had only assailed him for the first time when he
learned of the nature of Murray's freight with John Dunne, and which
had received further support in his realization of the man's lies on
the subject of Alec.
"I've got to talk that way," he said. "I'm not yearning to drive you
any. Say, Jessie, if there's a person in this world I'd hate to drive
it's you. If there's a thing I could do to fix things easy for you,
why, a cyclone couldn't stop me fixing them that way. But I saw the
scare in your eyes through the window of that feller's office, and I
just had to know about it. I can't hand you the things tumbling around
in the back of my head. I don't know them all myself, but there's
things, and they're things I can't get quit of. Maybe some time
they'll straighten out, and when they do I'll be able to show them to
you. Meanwhile, we'll leave 'em where they are, and simply figger I'm
thinking harder than I ever thought in my life, and those thoughts are
around you, and for you, all the time."
The simplicity of his words and manner robbed the girl of all
confusion. A great delight surged through her heart. This great
figure, this strong man, with his steady eyes and masterful methods was
setting himself her champion before the world. The lonely spirit of
the wilderness was deeply in her heart, and the sense of protection
became something too rapturous for words.
Her frank eyes thanked him though her lips remained dumb.
"I'm quitting to-morrow," he went on. "But I couldn't go till I'd made
a big talk with you. Bill's been on the grouch days. And Charley?
Why, Charley's come nigh raising a riot. But I had to wait--for you."
He paused. Nor from his manner could any one have detected the depths
of emotion stirred in him. A great fear possessed him, and his heart
was burdened with the crushing weight of it. For the first time in his
life his whole future seemed to have passed into other hands. And
those hands were the brown sunburnt hands, so small, so desirable, of
this girl whose knowledge and outlook were bounded by the great
wilderness they had loved, and so often vilified together. To him it
seemed strange, yet so natural. To him it seemed that for the first
time he was learning something of the real meaning of life. Never had
he desired a thing which was beyond his power to possess. Doubt had
never been his. Now he knew that doubt was a hideous reality, and the
will of this girl could rob him beyond all hope of all that made his
life worth while.
He drew a deep breath. It was the summoning of the last ounce of
purpose and courage in him. He flung all caution aside, he paused not
for a single word. He became the veriest suppliant at the shrine where
woman reigns supreme.
"Y'see, Jessie, I want to tell you things. I want to tell you I love
you so that nothing else counts. I want to tell you I've been
traipsing up and down this long trail hunting around all the while for
something, and I guessed that something was--gold. So it was. I know
that now. But it wasn't the gold we men-folk start out to buy our
pleasures with. It was the sort of gold that don't lie around in
'placers.' It don't lie anywhere around in the earth. It's on top.
It walks around, and it's in a good woman's heart. Well, say," he went
on, moving towards the tree-trunk, and sitting down at the girl's side,
"I found it. Oh, yes, I found it."
His voice had lowered to an appealing note which stirred the girl to
the depths of her soul. She sat leaning forward. Her elbows were
resting on her knees, and her hands were clasped. Her soft gray eyes
were gazing far out down the naked avenue ahead without seeing. Her
whole soul was concentrated on the radiant vision of the paradise his
words opened up before her.
"I found it," he went on. "But it's not mine--yet. Not by a sight.
Pick an' shovel won't hand it me. The muscles that have served me so
well in the past can't help me now. I'm up against it. I guess I'm
well-nigh beat. I can't get that gold till it's handed me. And the
only hands can pass it my way are--yours."
He reached out, and one hand gently closed over the small brown ones
clasped so tightly together.
"Just these little hands," he continued, while the girl unresistingly
yielded to his pressure. "Say, they're not big to hold so much of the
gold I'm needing. Look at 'em," he added, gently parting them, and
turning one soft palm upwards. "But it's all there. Sure, sure. I
don't need a thing they can't hand me. Not a thing." He closed his
own hand over the upturned palm. "If I got all this little hand could
pass me there isn't a thing I couldn't do. Say, little Jessie, there's
a sort of heaven on this earth for us men-folk. It's a heaven none of
us deserve. And it lies in the soul of one woman. If she guesses to
open the gate, why, we can walk right in. It she don't choose that
way, then I guess there's only perdition waiting around to take us in.
Well, I got to those gates right now." One arm unobtrusively circled
the girl's waist, and slowly its pressure drew her towards him. "And
I'm waiting. It's all up to you. I'm just standing around.
Maybe--maybe you'll--open those gates?"
The girl's head gently inclined towards him. In a moment her lips were
clinging to his. Those ripe, soft, warm lips had answered him.
Later--much later, when the warming sun had absorbed the fleecy screen
which had served its earlier pastime, and the spring breeze had hastily
sought new fields upon which to devote its melting efforts, Jessie
found courage to urge the single regret these moments had left her.
"And you still need to quit--to-morrow?" she asked shyly.
"More surely than ever."
"Why?"
A smile lit the man's eyes. She was using his own pressure against
himself.
He suddenly sprang from his seat. The girl, too, rose and stood
confronting him with questioning eyes. She was tall. For all his
great size he was powerless to rob her of one inch of the gracious form
which her mother had bestowed upon her. He held out his hands so that
they rested on her shoulders. He gazed down into her face with eyes
filled with a joy and triumph unspeakable. And he spoke out of the
buoyant strength of his heart, which was full to overflowing.
"Because, more than ever I need to go--now. Say, my dear, there's
folks who've hurt you in this world. They've hurt you sore. I'm going
to locate 'em up here, and down at Leaping Horse. And when I've
located them they're going to pay. Do you get what that means? No.
You can't. Your gentle heart can't get it all, when men set out to
make folk who've hurt women-folk bad pay for their doings. And I'm
glad. I know. And, by God, the folk who've hurt you are going to pay
good. They're going to pay--me."