IV

Jim made his journey in good weather with his faithful dogs alone, and

came into the camp of the Crees armed with only a revolver. If he had gone

with ten men, there would have been an instant melee, in which he would

have lost his life. This is what the chief had expected, had prepared for;

but Jim was more formidable alone, with power far behind him which could

come with force and destroy the tribe, if resistance was offered, than

with fifty men. His tongue had a gift of terse and picturesque speech,

powerful with a people who had the gift of imagination. With five hundred

men ready to turn him loose in the plains without dogs or food, he carried

himself with a watchful coolness and complacent determination which got

home to their minds with great force.

For hours the struggle for the murderer went on, a struggle of mind over

inferior mind and matter.

Arrowhead was a chief whose will had never been crossed by his own people,

and to master that will by a superior will, to hold back the destructive

force which, to the ignorant minds of the braves, was only a natural force

of defence, meant a task needing more than authority behind it. For the

very fear of that authority put in motion was an incentive to present

resistance--to stave off the day of trouble. The faces that surrounded Jim

were thin with hunger, and the murder that had been committed by the chief

had, as its origin, the foolish replies of the Hudson's Bay Company's man

to their demand for supplies. Arrowhead had killed him with his own hand.

But Jim Templeton was of a different calibre. Although he had not been

told it, he realized that, indirectly, hunger was the cause of the crime

and might easily become the cause of another; for their tempers were

sharper even than their appetites. Upon this he played; upon this he made

an exhortation to the chief. He assumed that Arrowhead had become violent

because of his people's straits, that Arrowhead's heart yearned for his

people and would make sacrifice for them. Now, if Arrowhead came quietly,

he would see that supplies of food were sent at once, and that

arrangements were made to meet the misery of their situation. Therefore,

if Arrowhead came freely, he would have so much in his favor before his

judges; if he would not come quietly, then he must be brought by force;

and if they raised a hand to prevent it, then destruction would fall upon

all--all save the women and children. The law must be obeyed. They might

try to resist the law through him, but, if violence was shown, he would

first kill Arrowhead, and then destruction would descend like a wind out

of the north, darkness would swallow them, and their bones would cover the

plains.

As he ended his words a young brave sprang forward with hatchet raised.

Jim's revolver slipped down into his palm from his sleeve, and a bullet

caught the brave in the lifted arm. The hatchet dropped to the ground.

Then Jim's eyes blazed, and he turned a look of anger on the chief, his

face pale and hard, as he said: "The stream rises above the banks; come

with me, chief, or all will drown. I am master, and I speak. Ye are hungry

because ye are idle. Ye call the world yours, yet ye will not stoop to

gather from the earth the fruits of the earth. Ye sit idle in the summer,

and women and children die round you when winter comes. Because the game

is gone, ye say. Must the world stand still because a handful of Crees

need a hunting-ground? Must the makers of cities and the wonders of the

earth, who fill the land with plenty--must they stand far off, because the

Crees and their chief would wander over a million acres, for each man a

million, when by a hundred--ay, by ten--each white man would live in

plenty and make the land rejoice? See! Here is the truth. When the Great

Spirit draws the game away so that the hunting is poor, ye sit down and

fill your hearts with murder, and in the blackness of your thoughts kill

my brother. Idle and shiftless and evil ye are, while the earth cries out

to give you of its plenty, a great harvest from a little seed, if ye will

but dig and plant, and plough and sow and reap, and lend your backs to

toil. Now hear and heed. The end is come. For this once ye shall be

fed--by the blood of my heart, ye shall be fed! And another year ye shall

labor, and get the fruits of your labor, and not stand waiting, as it

were, till a fish shall pass the spear or a stag water at your door, that

ye may slay and eat. The end is come, ye idle men. O chief, hearken! One

of your braves would have slain me, even as you slew my brother--he one,

and you a thousand. Speak to your people as I have spoken, and then come

and answer for the deed done by your hand. And this I say that right shall

be done between men and men. Speak."

Jim had made his great effort, and not without avail. Arrowhead rose

slowly, the cloud gone out of his face, and spoke to his people, bidding

them wait in peace until food came, and appointing his son chief in his

stead until his return.

"The white man speaks truth, and I will go," he said. "I shall return," he

continued, "if it be written so upon the leaves of the Tree of Life; and

if it be not so written, I shall fade like a mist, and the tepees will

know me not again. The days of my youth are spent, and my step no longer

springs from the ground. I shuffle among the grass and the fallen leaves,

and my eyes scarce know the stag from the doe. The white man is master--if

he wills it we shall die; if he wills it we shall live. And this was ever

so. It is in the tale of our people. One tribe ruled, and the others were

their slaves. If it is written on the leaves of the Tree of Life that the

white man rule us forever, then it shall be so, I have spoken. Now,

behold, I go."

Jim had conquered, and together they sped away with the dogs through the

sweet-smelling spruce woods where every branch carried a cloth of white,

and the only sound heard was the swish of a blanket of snow as it fell to

the ground from the wide webs of green, or a twig snapped under the load

it bore. Peace brooded in the silent and comforting forest, and Jim and

Arrowhead, the Indian ever ahead, swung along, mile after mile, on their

snow-shoes, emerging at last upon the wide, white prairie.

* * * * *

A hundred miles of sun and fair weather, sleeping at night in the open in

a trench dug in the snow, no fear in the thoughts of Jim, nor evil in the

heart of the heathen man. There had been moments of watchfulness, of

uncertainty, on Jim's part, the first few hours of the first night after

they left the Cree reservation; but the conviction speedily came to Jim

that all was well; for the chief slept soundly from the moment he lay down

in his blankets between the dogs. Then Jim went to sleep as in his own

bed, and, waking, found Arrowhead lighting a fire from a little load of

sticks from the sledges. And between murderer and captor there sprang up

the companionship of the open road which brings all men to a certain land

of faith and understanding, unless they are perverted and vile. There was

no vileness in Arrowhead. There were no handcuffs on his hands, no sign of

captivity; they two ate out of the same dish, drank from the same basin,

broke from the same bread. The crime of Arrowhead, the gallows waiting for

him, seemed very far away. They were only two silent travellers, sharing

the same hardship, helping to give material comfort to each other--in the

inevitable democracy of those far places, where small things are not great

nor great things small; where into men's hearts comes the knowledge of the

things that matter; where, from the wide, starry sky, from the august

loneliness, and the soul of the life which has brooded there for untold

generations, God teaches the values of this world and the next.

One hundred miles of sun and fair weather, and then fifty miles of bitter,

aching cold, with nights of peril from the increasing chill, so that Jim

dared not sleep lest he should never wake again, but die benumbed and

exhausted! Yet Arrowhead slept through all. Day after day so, and then ten

miles of storm such as come only to the vast barrens of the northlands;

and woe to the traveller upon whom the icy wind and the blinding snow

descended! Woe came upon Jim Templeton and Arrowhead, the heathen.

In the awful struggle between man and nature that followed, the captive

became the leader. The craft of the plains, the inherent instinct, the

feeling which was more than eyesight became the only hope. One whole day

to cover ten miles--an endless path of agony, in which Jim went down again

and again, but came up blinded by snow and drift, and cut as with lashes

by the angry wind. At the end of the ten miles was a Hudson Bay Company's

post and safety; and through ten hours had the two struggled toward it,

going off at tangents, circling on their own tracks; but the Indian, by an

instinct as sure as the needle to the pole, getting the direction to the

post again, in the moments of direst peril and uncertainty. To Jim the

world became a sea of maddening forces which buffeted him; a whirlpool of

fire in which his brain was tortured, his mind was shrivelled up; a vast

army rending itself, each man against the other. It was a purgatory of

music, broken by discords; and then at last--how sweet it all was, after

the eternity of misery!--"Church bells and voices low," and Sally singing

to him, Nancy's voice calling! Then, nothing but sleep--sleep, a sinking

down millions of miles in an ether of drowsiness which thrilled him; and

after--no more.

None who has suffered up to the limit of what the human body and soul may

bear can remember the history of those distracted moments when the

struggle became one between the forces in nature and the forces in man,

between agonized body and smothered mind, yet with the divine intelligence

of the created being directing, even though subconsciously, the fight.

How Arrowhead found the post in the mad storm he could never have told.

Yet he found it, with Jim unconscious on the sledge and with limbs frozen,

all the dogs gone but two, the leathers over the Indian's shoulders as he

fell against the gate of the post with a shrill cry that roused the factor

and his people within, together with Sergeant Sewell, who had been sent

out from headquarters to await Jim's arrival there. It was Sewell's hand

which first felt Jim's heart and pulse, and found that there was still

life left, even before it could be done by the doctor from headquarters,

who had come to visit a sick man at the post.

For hours they worked with snow upon the frozen limbs to bring back life

and consciousness. Consciousness came at last with half delirium, half

understanding; as, emerging from the passing sleep of anaesthetics, the eye

sees things and dimly registers them before the brain has set them in any

relation to life or comprehension.

But Jim was roused at last, and the doctor presently held to his lips a

glass of brandy. Then from infinite distance Jim's understanding returned;

the mind emerged, but not wholly, from the chaos in which it was

travelling. His eyes stood out in eagerness.

"Brandy! brandy!" he said, hungrily.

With an oath Sewell snatched the glass from the doctor's hand, put it on

the table, then stooped to Jim's ear and said, hoarsely: "Remember--Nancy.

For God's sake, sir, don't drink!"

Jim's head fell back, the fierce light went out of his eyes, the face

became grayer and sharper. "Sally--Nancy--Nancy," he whispered, and his

fingers clutched vaguely at the quilt.

"He must have brandy or he will die. The system is pumped out. He must be

revived," said the doctor. He reached again for the glass of spirits.

Jim understood now. He was on the borderland between life and death, his

feet were at the brink. "No--not--brandy, no!" he moaned. "Sally--Sally,

kiss me," he said, faintly, from the middle world in which he was.

"Quick, the broth!" said Sewell to the factor, who had been preparing it.

"Quick, while there's a chance." He stooped and called into Jim's ear:

"For the love of God, wake up, sir. They're coming--they're both

coming--Nancy's coming. They'll soon be here." What matter that he

lied?--a life was at stake.

Jim's eyes opened again. The doctor was standing with the brandy in his

hand. Half madly Jim reached out. "I must live until they come," he cried;

"the brandy--ah, give it! Give it--ah, no, no, I must not," he added,

gasping, his lips trembling, his hands shaking.

Sewell held the broth to his lips. He drank a little, yet his face became

grayer and grayer; a bluish tinge spread about his mouth.

"Have you nothing else, sir?" asked Sewell, in despair.

The doctor put down the brandy, went quickly to his medicine-case, dropped

into a glass some liquid from a phial, came over again, and poured a

little between the lips; then a little more, as Jim's eyes opened again;

and at last every drop in the glass trickled down the sinewy throat.

Presently as they watched him the doctor said: "It will not do. He must

have brandy. It has life--food--in it."

Jim understood the words. He knew that if he drank the brandy the chances

against his future were terrible. He had made his vow, and he must keep

it. Yet the thirst was on him; his enemy had him by the throat again, was

dragging him down. Though his body was so cold, his throat was on fire.

But in the extremity of his strength his mind fought on--fought on,

growing weaker every moment. He was having his last fight. They watched

him with an aching anxiety, and there was anger in the doctor's face. He

had no patience with these forces arrayed against him.

At last the doctor whispered to Sewell, "It's no use; he must have the

brandy, or he can't live an hour."

Sewell weakened; the tears fell down his rough, hard cheeks. "It'll ruin

him--it's ruin or death."

"Trust a little more in God and in the man's strength. Let us give him the

chance. Force it down his throat--he's not responsible," said the

physician, to whom saving life was more than all else.

Suddenly there appeared at the bedside Arrowhead, gaunt and weak, his face

swollen, the skin of it broken by the whips of storm.

"He is my brother," he said, and, stooping, laid both hands, which he had

held before the fire for a long time, on Jim's heart. "Take his feet, his

hands, his legs, and his head in your hands," he said to them all. "Life

is in us; we will give him life."

He knelt down and kept both hands on Jim's heart, while the others, even

the doctor, awed by his act, did as they were bidden. "Shut your eyes. Let

your life go into him. Think of him, and him alone. Now!" said Arrowhead,

in a strange voice.

He murmured, and continued murmuring, his body drawing closer and closer

to Jim's body, while in the deep silence, broken only by the chanting of

his low, monotonous voice, the others pressed Jim's hands and head and

feet and legs--six men under the command of a heathen murderer.

The minutes passed. The color came back to Jim's face, the skin of his

hands filled up, they ceased twitching, his pulse got stronger, his eyes

opened with a new light in them.

"I'm living, anyhow," he said, at last, with a faint smile. "I'm

hungry--broth, please."

The fight was won, and Arrowhead, the pagan murderer, drew over to the

fire and crouched down beside it, his back to the bed, impassive and

still. They brought him a bowl of broth and bread, which he drank slowly,

and placed the empty bowl between his knees. He sat there through the

night, though they tried to make him lie down.

As the light came in at the windows, Sewell touched him on the shoulder

and said, "He is sleeping now."

"I hear my brother breathe," answered Arrowhead. "He will live."

All night he had listened, and had heard Jim's breath as only a man who

has lived in waste places can hear. "He will live. What I take with one

hand I give with the other."

He had taken the life of the factor; he had given Jim his life. And when

he was tried three months later for murder, some one else said this for

him, and the hearts of all, judge and jury, were so moved they knew not

what to do.

But Arrowhead was never sentenced, for, at the end of the first day's

trial, he lay down to sleep and never waked again. He was found the next

morning still and cold, and there was clasped in his hands a little doll

which Nancy had given him on one of her many visits to the prison during

her father's long illness. They found a piece of paper in his belt with

these words in the Cree language: "With my hands on his heart at the post

I gave him the life that was in me, saving but a little until now.

Arrowhead, the chief, goes to find life again by the well at the root of

the tree. _How!_"

V

On the evening of the day that Arrowhead made his journey to "the well at

the root of the tree" a stranger knocked at the door of Captain

Templeton's cottage; then, without awaiting admittance, entered.

Jim was sitting with Nancy on his knee, her head against his shoulder,

Sally at his side, her face alight with some inner joy. Before the knock

came to the door Jim had just said, "Why do your eyes shine so, Sally?

What's in your mind?" She had been about to answer, to say to him what had

been swelling her heart with pride, though she had not meant to tell him

what he had forgotten--not till midnight. But the figure that entered the

room, a big man with deep-set eyes, a man of power who had carried

everything before him in the battle of life, answered for her.

"You have won the stake, Jim," he said, in a hoarse voice. "You and she

have won the stake, and I've brought it--brought it."

Before they could speak he placed in Sally's hands bonds for five million

dollars.

"Jim--Jim, my son!" he burst out. Then, suddenly, he sank into a chair

and, putting his head in his hands, sobbed aloud.

"My God, but I'm proud of you--speak to me, Jim. You've broken me up." He

was ashamed of his tears, but he could not wipe them away.

"Father, dear old man!" said Jim, and put his hands on the broad

shoulders.

Sally knelt down beside him, took both the great hands from the

tear-stained face, and laid them against her cheek. But presently she put

Nancy on his knees.

"I don't like you to cry," the child said, softly; "but to-day I cried

too, 'cause my Indian man is dead."

The old man could not speak, but he put his cheek down to hers. After a

minute, "Oh, but she's worth ten times that!" he said, as Sally came close

to him with the bundle he had thrust into her hands.

"What is it?" said Jim.

"It's five million dollars--for Nancy," she said.

"Five--million--what--?"

"The stake, Jim," said Sally. "If you did not drink for four years--never

touched a drop--we were to have five million dollars."

"You never told him, then--you never told him that?" asked the old man.

"I wanted him to win without it," she said. "If he won, he would be the

stronger; if he lost, it would not be so hard for him to bear."

The old man drew her down and kissed her cheek. He chuckled, though the

tears were still in his eyes.

"You are a wonder--the tenth wonder of the world!" he blurted.

Jim stood staring at the bundle in Nancy's hands. "Five millions--five

million dollars!" he kept saying to himself.

"I said Nancy's worth ten times that, Jim." The old man caught his hand

and pressed it. "But it was a damned near thing, I tell you," he added.

"They tried to break me and my railways and my bank. I had to fight the

combination, and there was one day when I hadn't that five million dollars

there, nor five. Jim, they tried to break the old man! And if they'd

broken me, they'd have made me out a scoundrel to her--to this wife of

yours who risked everything for both of us--for both of us, Jim; for she'd

given up the world to save you, and she was playing like a soul in hell

for heaven. If they'd broken me, I'd never have lifted my head again. When

things were at their worst I played to save that five millions--her stake

and mine; I played for that. I fought for it as a man fights his way out

of a burning house. And I won--I won. And it was by fighting for that five

millions I saved fifty--fifty millions, son. They didn't break the old

man, Jim. They didn't break him--not much."

"There are giants in the world still," said Jim, his own eyes full. He

knew now his father and himself, and he knew the meaning of all the bitter

and misspent life of the old days. He and his father were on a level of

understanding at last.

"Are you a giant?" asked Nancy, peering up into her grandfather's eyes.

The old man laughed, then sighed. "Perhaps I was once, more or less, my

dear," saying to her what he meant for the other two--"perhaps I was; but

I've finished. I'm through. I've had my last fight."

He looked at his son. "I pass the game on to you, Jim. You can do it. I

knew you could do it as the reports came in this year. I've had a

detective up here for four years. I had to do it. It was the devil in me.

You've got to carry on the game, Jim; I'm done. I'll stay home and potter

about. I want to go back to Kentucky, and build up the old place, and take

care of it a bit--your mother always loved it. I'd like to have it as it

was when she was there long ago. But I'll be ready to help you when I'm

wanted, understand."

"You want me to run things--your colossal schemes? You think--?"

"I don't think. I'm old enough to know,"