Lords of the North Part 24

After the day's trading Eric would come to my hut. Pacing the cramped place for hours, wild-eyed and silent, he would abruptly dash into the darkness of the night like one on the verge of madness. Thereupon, the taciturn, grave-faced La Robe Noire, tapping his forehead significantly, would look with meaning towards Little Fellow; and I would slip out some distance behind to see that Hamilton did himself no harm while the paroxysm lasted. So absorbed was he in his own gloom, for days he would not utter a syllable. The storm that had gathered would then discharge its strength in an outburst of incoherent ravings, which usually ended in Hamilton's illness and my watching over him night and day, keeping firearms out of reach. I have never seen--and hope I never may--any other being age so swiftly and perceptibly. I had attributed his worn appearance in Fort Douglas to the cannon accident and trusted the natural robustness of his const.i.tution would throw off the apparent languor; but as autumn wore into winter, there were more gray hairs on his temple, deeper lines furrowed his face and the erect shoulders began to bow.

When days slipped into weeks and weeks into months without the slightest inkling of Miriam's whereabouts to set at rest the fear that my rash pursuit had caused her death, I myself grew utterly despondent. Like all who embark on daring ventures, I had not counted on continuous frustration. The idea that I might waste a lifetime in the wilderness without accomplishing anything had never entered my mind. Week after week, the scouts dispatched in every direction came back without one word of the fugitives, and I began to imagine my a.s.sociation with Hamilton had been unfortunate for us both. This added to despair the bitterness of regret.

The winter was unusually mild, and less game came to the Missouri from the mountains and bad lands than in severe seasons. By February, we were on short rations. Two meals a day, with cat-fish for meat and dried skins in soup by way of variety, made up our regular fare for mid-winter. The frequent absence of my two Indians, scouring the region for the Sioux, left me to do my own fishing; and fishing with bare hands in frosty weather is not pleasant employment for a youth of soft up-bringing. Protracted bachelordom was also losing its charms; but that may have resulted from a new influence, which came into my life and seemed ever present.

At Christmas, Hamilton was threatened with violent insanity. As the Mandanes' provisions dwindled, the Indians grew surlier toward us; and I was as deep in despondency as a man could sink. Frequently, I wondered whether Father Holland would find us alive in the spring, and I sometimes feared ours would be the fate of Athabasca traders whose bodies satisfied the hunger of famishing Crees.

How often in those darkest hours did a presence, which defied time and s.p.a.ce, come silently to me, breathing inspiration that may not be spoken, healing the madness of despair and leaving to me in the midst of anxiety a peace which was wholly unaccountable! In the lambent flame of the rough stone fireplace, in the darkness between Hamilton's hut and mine, through which I often stole, dreading what I might find--everywhere, I felt and saw, or seemed to see, those gray eyes with the look of a startled soul opening its virgin beauty and revealing its inmost secrets.

A bleak, howling wind, with great piles of storm-scud overhead, raved all the day before Christmas. It was one of those afternoons when the sombre atmosphere seems weighted with gloom and weariness. On Christmas eve Hamilton's brooding brought on acute delirium. He had been more depressed than usual, and at night when we sat down to a cheerless supper of hare-skin soup and pemmican, he began to talk very fast and quite irrationally.

"See here, old boy," said I, "you'd better bunk here to-night. You're not well."

"Bunk!" said he icily, in the grand manner he sometimes a.s.sumed at the Quebec Club for the benefit of a too familiar member. "And pray, Sir, what might 'bunk' mean?"

"Go to bed, Eric," I coaxed, getting tight hold of his hands. "You're not well, old man; come to bed!"

"Bed!" he exclaimed with indignation. "Bed! You're a madman, Sir! I'm to meet Miriam on the St. Foye road." (It was here that Miriam lived in Quebec, before they were married.) "On the St. Foye road! See the lights glitter, dearest, in Lower Town," and he laughed aloud. Then followed such an outpouring of wild ravings I wept from very pity and helplessness.

"Rufus! Rufus, lad!" he cried, staring at me and clutching at his forehead as lucid intervals broke the current of his madness.

"Gillespie, man, what's wrong? I don't seem able to think.

Who--are--you? Who--in the world--are you? Gillespie! O Gillespie! I'm going mad! Am I going mad? Help me, Rufus! Why can't you help me? It's coming after me! See it! The hideous thing!" Tears started from his burning eyes and his brow was knotted hard as whipcord.

"Look! It's there!" he screamed, pointing to the fire, and he darted to the door, where I caught him. He fought off my grasp with maniacal strength, and succeeded in flinging open the door. Then I forgot this man was more than brother to me, and threw myself upon him as against an enemy, determined to have the mastery. The bleak wind roared through the open blackness of the doorway, and on the ground outside were shadows of two struggling, furious men. I saw the terrified faces of Little Fellow and La Robe Noire peering through the dark, and felt wet beads start from every pore in my body. Both of us were panting like f.a.gged racers.

One of us was fighting blindly, raining down aimless blows, I know not which, but I think it must have been Hamilton, for he presently sank in my arms, limp and helpless as a sick child.

Somehow I got him between the robes of my floor mattress. Drawing a box to the bedside I again took his hands between mine and prepared for a night's watch.

He raved in a low, indistinct tone, muttering Miriam's name again and again, and tossing his head restlessly from side to side. Then he fell into a troubled sleep. The supper lay untouched. Torches had burned black out. One tallow candle, that I had extravagantly put among some evergreens--our poor decorations for Christmas Eve--sputtered low and threw ghostly, branching shadows across the lodge. I slipped from the sick man's side, heaped more logs on the fire and stretched out between robes before the hearth. In the play of the flame Hamilton's face seemed suddenly and strangely calm. Was it the dim light, I wonder. The furrowed lines of sorrow seemed to fade, leaving the peaceful, transparent purity of the dead. I could not but a.s.sociate the branched shadows on the wall with legends of death keeping guard over the dying.

The shadow by his pillow gradually a.s.sumed vague, awesome shape. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Was this an illusion, or was I, too, going mad?

The filmy thing distinctly wavered and receded a little into the dark.

An unspeakable fear chilled my veins. Then I could have laughed defiance and challenged death. Death! Curse death! What had we to fear from dying? Had we not more to fear from living? At that came thought of my love and the tumult against life was quieted. I, too, like other mortals, had reason, the best of reason, to fear death. What matter if a lonely one like myself went out alone to the great dark? But when thought of my love came, a desolating sense of separation--separation not to be bridged by love or reason--overwhelmed me, and I, too, shrank back.

Again I peered forward. The shadow fluttered, moved, and came out of the gloom, a tender presence with ma.s.sy, golden hair, white-veined brow, and gray eyes, speaking unutterable things.

"My beloved!" I cried. "Oh, my beloved!" and I sprang towards her; but she had glided back among the spectral branches.

The candle tumbled to the floor, extinguishing all light, and I was alone with the sick man breathing heavily in the darkness. A log broke over the fire. The flames burst up again; but I was still alone. Had I, too, lost grip of reality; or was she in distress calling for me?

Neither suggestion satisfied; for the mean lodge was suddenly filled with a great calm, and my whole being was flooded and thrilled with the trancing ecstasy of an ethereal presence.

If I remember rightly--and to be perfectly frank, I do--though I was in as desperate straits as a man could be, I lay before the hearth that Christmas Eve filled with grat.i.tude to heaven--G.o.d knows such a gift must have come from heaven!--for the love with which I had been dowered.

How it might have been with other men I know not. For myself, I could not have come through that dreary winter unscathed without the influence of her, who would have been the first to disclaim such power. Among the velvet cushions of the east one may criticise the lapse of white man to barbarity; but in the wilderness human voice is as grateful to the ear as rain patter in a drouth. There, men deal with facts, not arguments.

Natives break the loneliness of an isolated life by not unwelcomed visits. Comes a time when they tarry over long in the white man's lodge.

Other men, who have scouted the possibility of sinking to savagery, have forsaken the ways of their youth. Who can say that I might not have departed from the path called rect.i.tude?

Religion may keep a holy man upright in slippery places; but for common mortals, devotion to a being, whom, in one period of their worship men rank with angels, does much to steady wavering feet. Hers was the influence that aroused loathing for the drunken debauches, the cheating, the depraved living of the Indian lodges: hers, the influence that kept the loathing from slipping into indifference, the indifference from becoming partic.i.p.ation. Indeed, I could wish a young man no better talisman against the world, the flesh and the devil, than love for a pure woman.

How we dragged through the hours of that night, of Christmas and the days that followed, I do not attempt to set down here. Hamilton's illness lasted a month. What with trading and keeping our scouts on the search for Miriam and waiting on the sick man, I had enough to busy me without brooding over my own woes. Hard as my life was, it was fortunate I had no time for thoughts of self and so escaped the melancholy apathy that so often benumbs the lonely man's activities. And when Eric became convalescent, I had enough to do finding diversion for his mind. Keeping record of our doings on birch-bark sheets, playing quoits with the Mandanes and polo with a few fearless riders, helped to pa.s.s the long weary days.

So the dismal winter wore away and spring was drizzling into summer.

Within a few weeks we should be turning our faces northward for the forks of the Red and a.s.siniboine. The prospect of movement after long stagnation cheered Hamilton and fanned what neither of us would acknowledge--a faint hope that Miriam might yet be alive in the north. I verily believe Eric would have started northward with restored courage had not our plans been thwarted by the sinister handiwork of Le Grand Diable.

CHAPTER XV

THE GOOD WHITE FATHER

For a week Hamilton and I had been busy in our respective lodges getting peltries and personal belongings into shape for return to Red River. On Sat.u.r.day night, at least I counted it Sat.u.r.day from the notches on my doorpost, though Eric, grown morose and contradictory, maintained that it was Sunday--we sat talking before the fire of my lodge. A dreary raindrip pattered through the leaky roof and the soaked parchment tacked across the window opening flapped monotonously against the pine logs.

Unfastening the moon-shaped medallion, which my uncle had given me, I slowly spelled out the Nor'-Westers' motto--"Fort.i.tude in Distress."

"For-ti-tude in Dis-tress," I repeated idly. "By Jove, Hamilton, we need it, don't we?"

Eric's lips curled in scorn. Without answering, he impatiently kicked a fallen brand back to the live coals. I know old saws are poor comfort to people in distress, being chiefly applicable when they are not needed.

"What in the world can be keeping Father Holland?" I asked, leading off on another tack. "Here we are almost into the summer, and never a sight of him."

"Did you really expect him back alive from the Bloods?" sneered Hamilton. He had unconsciously acquired a habit of expecting the worst.

"Certainly," I returned. "He's been among them before."

"Then all I have to say is, you're a fool!"

Poor Eric! He had informed me I was a fool so often in his ravings I had grown quite used to the insult. He glared savagely at the fire, and if I had not understood this bitterness towards the missionary, the next remark was of a nature to enlighten me.

"I don't see why any man in his senses wants to save the soul of an Indian," he broke out. "Let them go where they belong! Souls! They haven't any souls, or if they have, it's the soul of a fiend----"

"By the bye, Eric," I interrupted, for this petulant ill-humor, that saw naught but evil in everything, was becoming too frequent and always ended in the same way--a night of semi-delirium, "by the bye, did you see those fellows turning up soil for corn with a buffalo shoulder-blade as a hoe?"

"I wish every d.a.m.n Red a thousand feet under the soil, deeper than that, if the temperature increases."

It was impossible to talk to Hamilton without provoking a quarrel.

Leaning back with hands clasped behind my head, I watched through half-closed eyes his sad face darkling under stormy moods.

At last the rain succeeded in soaking through the parchment across the window and the wind drove through a great split in chilling gusts that added to the cabin's discomfort. I got up and jammed an old hat into the hole. At the window I heard the shouting of Indians having a hilarious night among the lodges and was amazed at the sound of discharging firearms above the huzzas, for ammunition was scarce among the Mandanes.

The hubbub seemed to be coming towards our hut. I could see nothing through the window slit, and lighting a pine f.a.got, shot back the latch-bolt and threw open the door. A mult.i.tude of tawny, joyous, upturned faces thronged to the steps. The crowd was surging about some newcomer, and Chief Black Cat was prancing around in an ecstasy of delight, firing away all his gunpowder in joyous demonstration. I lifted my torch. The Indians fell back and forth strode Father Holland, his face shining wet and abeam with pleasure. The Indians had been welcoming "their good white father." As he dismissed his Mandane children we drew him in and placed his soaked over-garments before the fire. Then we proffered him all the delicacies of bachelors' quarters, and filled and refilled his bowl with soup, and did not stop pouring out our lye-black tea till he had drained the dregs of it.

Having satisfied his inner-man, we gave him the best stump-tree seat in the cabin and sat back to listen. There was the awkward pause of reunion, when friends have not had time to gather up the loose threads of a parted past and weave them anew into stronger bands of comradeship.

Hamilton and the priest were strangers; but if the latter were as overcome by the meeting after half a year's isolation as I was, the silence was not surprising. To me it seemed the genial face was unusually grave, and I noticed a long, horizontal scar across his forehead.

"What's that, Father?" I asked, indicating the mark on his brow.

"Tush, youngster! Nothing! Nothing at all! Sampled scalping-knife on me; thought better of it, kept me out of the martyr's crown."