"Please, I want to go, too, Jim."
Jim swung round and caught the child up in his arms.
"Say, how dare you call your father _Jim_--eh, tell me that?"
"It's what mummy calls you--it's pretty."
"I don't call her 'mummy' because you do, and you mustn't call me _Jim_
because she does--do you hear?"
The whimsical face lowered a little, then the rare and beautiful dark blue
eyes raised slowly, shaded by the long lashes, and the voice said,
demurely, "Yes--Jim."
"Nancy--Nancy," said a voice from the corner in reproof, mingled with
suppressed laughter. "Nancy, you mustn't be saucy. You must say 'father'
to--"
"Yes, mummy. I'll say father to--Jim."
"You imp--you imp of delight," said Jim, as he strained the dainty little
lass to his breast, while she appeared interested in a wave of his black
hair, which she curled around her finger.
Sally came forward with the little parcel of sandwiches she had been
preparing, and put them in the saddlebags lying on a chair at the door, in
readiness for the journey Jim was about to make. Her eyes were glistening,
and her face had a heightened color. The three years which had passed
since she married had touched her not at all to her disadvantage, rather
to her profit. She looked not an hour older; motherhood had only added to
her charm, lending it a delightful gravity. The prairie life had given a
shining quality to her handsomeness, an air of depth and firmness, an
exquisite health and clearness to the color in her cheeks. Her step was as
light as Nancy's, elastic and buoyant--a gliding motion which gave a
sinuous grace to the movements of her body. There had also come into her
eyes a vigilance such as deaf people possess, a sensitive observation
imparting a deeper intelligence to the face.
Here was the only chance by which you could guess the story of her life.
Her eyes were like the ears of an anxious mother who can never sleep till
every child is abed; whose sense is quick to hear the faintest footstep
without or within; and who, as years go on, and her children grow older
and older, must still lie awake hearkening for the late footstep on the
stair. In Sally's eyes was the story of the past three years: of love and
temptation and struggle, of watchfulness and yearning and anxiety, of
determination and an inviolable hope. Her eyes had a deeper look than that
in Jim's. Now, as she gazed at him, the maternal spirit rose up from the
great well of protectiveness in her and engulfed both husband and child.
There was always something of the maternal in her eyes when she looked at
Jim. He did not see it--he saw only the wonderful blue, and the humor
which had helped him over such difficult places these past three years. In
steadying and strengthening Jim's will, in developing him from his
Southern indolence into Northern industry and sense of responsibility,
John Appleton's warnings had rung in Sally's ears, and Freddy Hartzman's
forceful and high-minded personality had passed before her eyes with an
appeal powerful and stimulating; but always she came to the same upland of
serene faith and white-hearted resolve; and Jim became dearer and dearer.
The baby had done much to brace her faith in the future and comfort her
anxious present. The child had intelligence of a rare order. She would lie
by the half-hour on the floor, turning over the leaves of a book without
pictures, and, before she could speak, would read from the pages in a
language all her own. She made a fairy world for herself, peopled by
characters to whom she gave names, to whom she assigned curious attributes
and qualities. They were as real to her as though flesh and blood, and she
was never lonely, and never cried; and she had buried herself in her
father's heart. She had drawn to her the roughest men in the troop, and
for old Sewell, the grim sergeant, she had a specially warm place.
"You can love me if you like," she had said to him at the very start, with
the egotism of childhood; but made haste to add, "because I love you,
Gri-Gri." She called him Gri-Gri from the first, but they knew only long
afterward that "gri-gri" meant "gray-gray," to signify that she called him
after his grizzled hairs.
What she had been in the life-history of Sally and Jim they both knew. Jim
regarded her with an almost superstitious feeling. Sally was his strength,
his support, his inspiration, his bulwark of defence; Nancy was the charm
he wore about his neck--his mascot, he called her. Once, when she was ill,
he had suffered as he had never done before in his life. He could not
sleep nor eat, and went about his duties like one in a dream. When his
struggles against his enemy were fiercest, he kept saying over her name to
himself, as though she could help him. Yet always it was Sally's hand he
held in the darkest hours, in his brutal moments; for in this fight
between appetite and will there are moments when only the animal seems to
exist, and the soul disappears in the glare and gloom of the primal
emotions. Nancy he called his "lucky sixpence," but he called Sally his
"guinea-girl."
From first to last his whimsicality never deserted him. In his worst
hours, some innate optimism and humor held him steady in his fight. It was
not depression that possessed him at the worst, but the violence of an
appetite most like a raging pain which men may endure with a smile upon
their lips. He carried in his face the story of a conflict, the aftermath
of bitter experience; and through all there pulsed the glow of experience.
He had grown handsomer, and the graceful decision of his figure, the
deliberate certainty of every action, heightened the force of a singular
personality. As in the eyes of Sally, in his eyes was a long, reflective
look which told of things overcome, and yet of dangers present. His lips
smiled often, but the eyes said: "I have lived, I have seen, I have
suffered, and I must suffer more. I have loved, I have been loved under
the shadow of the sword. Happiness I have had, and golden hours, but not
peace--never peace. My soul has need of peace."
In the greater, deeper experience of their lives, the more material side
of existence had grown less and less to them. Their home was a model of
simple comfort and some luxury, though Jim had insisted that Sally's
income should not be spent, except upon the child, and should be saved for
the child, their home being kept on his pay and on the tiny income left by
his mother. With the help of an Indian girl, and a half-breed for out-door
work and fires and gardening, Sally had cared for the house herself.
Ingenious and tasteful, with a gift for cooking and an educated hand, she
had made her little home as pretty as their few possessions would permit.
Refinement covered all, and three or four score books were like so many
friends to comfort her when Jim was away; like kind and genial neighbors
when he was at home. From Browning she had written down in her long,
sliding handwriting, and hung up beneath Jim's looking-glass, the
heartening and inspiring words:
"One who never turned his back, but marched breast
forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would
triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake."
They had lived above the sordid, and there was something in the nature of
Jim's life to help them to it. He belonged to a small handful of men who
had control over an empire, with an individual responsibility and
influence not contained in the scope of their commissions. It was a matter
of moral force and character, and of uniform, symbolical only of the great
power behind; of the long arm of the State; of the insistence of the law,
which did not rely upon force alone, but on the certainty of its
administration. In such conditions the smallest brain was bound to expand,
to take on qualities of judgment and temperateness which would never be
developed in ordinary circumstances. In the case of Jim Templeton, who
needed no stimulant to his intellect, but rather a steadying quality, a
sense of proportion, the daily routine, the command of men, the diverse
nature of his duties, half civil, half military, the personal appeals made
on all sides by the people of the country for advice, for help, for
settlement of disputes, for information which his well-instructed mind
could give--all these modified the romantic brilliance of his intellect,
made it and himself more human.
It had not come to him all at once. His intellect at first stood in his
way. His love of paradox, his deep observation, his insight--all made him
inherently satirical, though not cruelly so; but satire had become pure
whimsicality at last; and he came to see that, on the whole, the world was
imperfect, but also, on the whole, was moving toward perfection rather
than imperfection. He grew to realize that what seemed so often weakness
in men was tendency and idiosyncrasy rather than evil. And in the end he
thought better of himself as he came to think better of all others. For he
had thought less of all the world because he had thought so little of
himself. He had overestimated his own faults, had made them into crimes in
his own eyes, and, observing things in others of similar import, had
become almost a cynic in intellect, while in heart he had remained a boy.
In all that he had changed a great deal. His heart was still the heart of
a boy, but his intellect had sobered, softened, ripened--even in this
secluded and seemingly unimportant life; as Sally had said and hoped it
would. Sally's conviction had been right. But the triumph was not yet
achieved. She knew it. On occasion the tones of his voice told her, the
look that came into his eyes proclaimed it to her, his feverishness and
restlessness made it certain. How many a night had she thrown her arm over
his shoulder, and sought his hand and held it while in the dark silence,
wide-eyed, dry-lipped, and with a throat like fire he had held himself
back from falling. There was liquor in the house--the fight would not have
been a fight without it. She had determined that he should see his enemy
and meet him in the plains and face him down; and he was never many feet
away from his possible disaster. Yet for long over three years all had
gone well. There was another year. Would he last out the course?
At first the thought of the great stake for which she was playing in terms
of currency, with the head of Jim's father on every note, was much with
her. The amazing nature of the offer of five millions of dollars
stimulated her imagination, roused her; gold coins are counters in the
game of success, signs and tokens. Money alone could not have lured her;
but rather what it represented--power, width of action, freedom to help
when the heart prompted, machinery for carrying out large plans, ability
to surround with advantage those whom we love. So, at first, while yet the
memories of Washington were much with her, the appeal of the millions was
strong. The gallant nature of the contest and the great stake braced her;
she felt the blood quicken in her pulse.
But, all through, the other thing really mastered her: the fixed idea that
Jim must be saved. As it deepened, the other life that she had lived
became like the sports in which we shared when children, full of vivacious
memory, shining with impulse and the stir of life, but not to be
repeated--days and deeds outgrown. So the light of one idea shone in her
face. Yet she was intensely human too; and if her eyes had not been set on
the greater glory, the other thought might have vulgarized her mind, made
her end and goal sordid--the descent of a nature rather than its
ascension.
When Nancy came, the lesser idea, the stake, took on a new importance, for
now it seemed to her that it was her duty to secure for the child its
rightful heritage. Then Jim, too, appeared in a new light, as one who
could never fulfil himself unless working through the natural channels of
his birth, inheritance, and upbringing. Jim, drunken and unreliable, with
broken will and fighting to find himself--the waste places were for him,
until he was the master of his will and emotions. Once, however, secure in
ability to control himself, with cleansed brain and purpose defined, the
widest field would be still be too narrow for his talents--and the five,
yes, the fifty millions of his father must be his.
She had never repented having married Jim; but twice in those three years
she had broken down and wept as though her heart would break. There were
times when Jim's nerves were shaken in his struggle against the unseen
foe, and he had spoken to her querulously, almost sharply. Yet in her
tears there was no reproach for him, rather for herself--the fear that she
might lose her influence over him, that she could not keep him close to
her heart, that he might drift away from her in the commonplaces and
monotony of work and domestic life. Everything so depended on her being to
him not only the one woman for whom he cared, but the woman without whom
he could care for nothing else.
"O, my God, give me his love," she had prayed. "Let me keep it yet a
little while. For his sake, not for my own, let me have the power to hold
his love. Make my mind always quiet, and let me blow neither hot nor cold.
Help me to keep my temper sweet and cheerful, so that he will find the
room empty where I am not, and his footsteps will quicken when he comes to
the door. Not for my sake, dear God, but for his, or my heart will
break--it will break unless Thou dost help me to hold him. O Lord, keep me
from tears; make my face happy that I may be goodly to his eyes, and
forgive the selfishness of a poor woman who has little, and would keep her
little and cherish it, for Christ's sake."
Twice had she poured out her heart so, in the agony of her fear that she
should lose favor in Jim's sight--she did not know how alluring she was,
in spite of the constant proofs offered her. She had had her will with all
who came her way, from Governor to Indian brave. Once, in a journey they
had made far north, soon after they came, she had stayed at a Hudson Bay
Company's post for some days, while there came news of restlessness among
the Indians, because of lack of food, and Jim had gone farther north to
steady the tribes, leaving her with the factor and his wife and a
half-breed servant.
While she and the factor's wife were alone in the yard of the post one
day, an Indian chief, Arrowhead, in war-paint and feathers, entered
suddenly, brandishing a long knife. He had been drinking, and there was
danger in his black eyes. With a sudden inspiration she came forward
quickly, nodded and smiled to him, and then pointed to a grindstone
standing in the corner of the yard. As she did so, she saw Indians
crowding into the gate armed with knives, guns, bows, and arrows. She
beckoned to Arrowhead, and he followed her to the grindstone. She poured
some water on the wheel and began to turn it, nodding at the now impassive
Indian to begin. Presently he nodded also, and put his knife on the stone.
She kept turning steadily, singing to herself the while, as with anxiety
she saw the Indians drawing closer and closer in from the gate. Faster and
faster she turned, and at last the Indian lifted his knife from the stone.
She reached out her hand with simulated interest, felt the edge with her
thumb, the Indian looking darkly at her the while. Presently, after
feeling the edge himself, he bent over the stone again, and she went on
turning the wheel, still singing softly. At last he stopped again and felt
the edge. With a smile which showed her fine, white teeth, she said, "Is
that for me?" making a significant sign across her throat at the same
time.
The old Indian looked at her grimly, then slowly shook his head in
negation.
"I go hunt Yellow Hawk to-night," he said. "I go fight; I like marry you
when I come back. _How_!" he said, and turned away toward the gate.
Some of his braves held back, the blackness of death in their looks. He
saw. "My knife is sharp," he said. "The woman is brave. She shall live--go
and fight Yellow Hawk, or starve and die."
Divining their misery, their hunger, and the savage thought that had come
to them, Sally had whispered to the factor's wife to bring food, and the
woman now came running out with two baskets full, and returned for more.
Sally ran forward among the Indians and put the food into their hands.
With grunts of satisfaction they seized what she gave, and thrust it into
their mouths, squatting on the ground. Arrowhead looked on stern and
immobile, but when at last she and the factor's wife sat down before the
braves with confidence and an air of friendliness, he sat down also; yet,
famished as he was, he would not touch the food. At last Sally, realizing
his proud defiance of hunger, offered him a little lump of pemmican and a
biscuit, and with a grunt he took it from her hands and ate it. Then, at
his command, a fire was lit, the pipe of peace was brought out, and Sally
and the factor's wife touched their lips to it, and passed it on.
So was a new treaty of peace and loyalty made with Arrowhead and his tribe
by a woman without fear, whose life had seemed not worth a minute's
purchase; and, as the sun went down, Arrowhead and his men went forth to
make war upon Yellow Hawk beside the Nettigon River. In this wise had her
influence spread in the land.
* * * * *
Standing now with the child in his arms and his wife looking at him with a
shining moisture of the eyes, Jim laughed outright. There came upon him a
sudden sense of power, of aggressive force--the will to do. Sally
understood, and came and laughingly grasped his arm.
"Oh, Jim," she said, playfully, "you are getting muscles like steel. You
hadn't these when you were colonel of the Kentucky Carbineers!"
"I guess I need them now," he said, smiling, and with the child still in
his arms drew her to a window looking northward. As far as the eye could
see, nothing but snow, like a blanket spread over the land. Here and there
in the wide expanse a tree silhouetted against the sky, a tracery of
eccentric beauty, and off in the far distance a solitary horseman riding
toward the post--riding hard.
"It was root, hog, or die with me, Sally," he continued, "and I rooted....
I wonder--that fellow on the horse--I have a feeling about him. See, he's
been riding hard and long--you can tell by the way the horse drops his
legs. He sags a bit himself.... But isn't it beautiful, all that out
there--the real quintessence of life."
The air was full of delicate particles of frost on which the sun sparkled,
and though there was neither bird nor insect, nor animal, nor stir of
leaf, nor swaying branch or waving grass, life palpitated in the air,
energy sang its song in the footstep that crunched the frosty ground, that
broke the crusted snow; it was in the delicate wind that stirred the flag
by the barracks away to the left; hope smiled in the wide prospect over
which the thrilling, bracing air trembled. Sally had chosen right.
"You had a big thought when you brought me here, guinea-girl," he added,
presently. "We are going to win out here"--he set the child down--"you and
I and this lucky sixpence." He took up his short fur coat. "Yes, we'll
win, honey." Then, with a brooding look in his face, he added:
"'The end comes as came the beginning,
And shadows fail into the past;
And the goal, is it not worth the winning,
If it brings us but home at the last?
While far through the pain of waste places
We tread, 'tis a blossoming rod
That drives us to grace from disgraces,
From the fens to the gardens of God!'"
He paused reflectively. "It's strange that this life up here makes you
feel that you must live a bigger life still, that this is only the wide
porch to the great labor-house--it makes you want to do things. Well,
we've got to win the stake first," he added, with a laugh.
"The stake is a big one, Jim--bigger than you think."
"You and her and me--me that was in the gutter."
"What is the gutter, dadsie?" asked Nancy.
"The gutter--the gutter is where the dish-water goes, midget," he
answered, with a dry laugh.
"Oh, I don't think you'd like to be in the gutter," Nancy said, solemnly.
"You have to get used to it first, miss," answered Jim. Suddenly Sally
laid both hands on Jim's shoulders and looked him in the eyes. "You must
win the stake, Jim. Think--now!"
She laid a hand on the head of the child. He did not know that he was
playing for a certain five millions, perhaps fifty millions, of dollars.
She had never told him of his father's offer. He was fighting only for
salvation, for those he loved, for freedom. As they stood there, the
conviction had come upon her that they had come to the last battle-field,
that this journey which Jim now must take would decide all, would give
them perfect peace or lifelong pain. The shadow of battle was over them,
but he had no foreboding, no premonition; he had never been so full of
spirits and life.
To her adjuration Jim replied by burying his face in her golden hair, and
he whispered: "Say, I've done near four years, my girl. I think I'm all
right now--I think. This last six months, it's been easy--pretty fairly
easy."
"Four months more, only four months more--God be good to us!" she said,
with a little gasp.
If he held out for four months more, the first great stage in their
life-journey would be passed, the stake won.
"I saw a woman get an awful fall once," Jim said, suddenly. "Her bones
were broken in twelve places, and there wasn't a spot on her body without
injury. They set and fixed up every broken bone except one. It was split
down. They didn't dare perform the operation; she couldn't stand it. There
was a limit to pain, and she had reached the boundary. Two years went by,
and she got better every way, but inside her leg those broken pieces of
bone were rubbing against each other. She tried to avoid the inevitable
operation, but Nature said, 'You must do it, or die in the end.' She
yielded. Then came the long preparations for the operation. Her heart
shrank, her mind got tortured. She'd suffered too much. She pulled herself
together, and said, 'I must conquer this shrinking body of mine by my
will. How shall I do it?' Something within her said, 'Think and do for
others. Forget yourself.' And so, as they got her ready for her torture,
she visited hospitals, agonized cripple as she was, and smiled and talked
to the sick and broken, telling them of her own miseries endured and
dangers faced, of the boundary of human suffering almost passed; and so
she got her courage for her own trial. And she came out all right in the
end. Well, that's the way I've felt sometimes. But I'm ready for my
operation now whenever it comes, and it's coming, I know. Let it come when
it must." He smiled.
There came a knock at the door, and presently Sewell entered. "The
Commissioner wishes you to come over, sir," he said.
"I was just coming, Sewell. Is all ready for the start?"
"Everything's ready, sir, but there's to be a change of orders.
Something's happened--a bad job up in the Cree country, I think."
A few minutes later Jim was in the Commissioner's office. The murder of a
Hudson's Bay Company's man had been committed in the Cree country. The
stranger whom Jim and Sally had seen riding across the plains had brought
the news for thirty miles, word of the murder having been carried from
point to point. The Commissioner was uncertain what to do, as the Crees
were restless through want of food and the absence of game, and a force
sent to capture Arrowhead, the chief who had committed the murder, might
precipitate trouble. Jim solved the problem by offering to go alone and
bring the chief into the post. It was two hundred miles to the Cree
encampment, and the journey had its double dangers.
Another officer was sent on the expedition for which Jim had been
preparing, and he made ready to go upon his lonely duty. His wife did not
know till three days after he had gone what the nature of his mission
was.